The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Stop me if this has been done before. :O

As an avid writer (currently taking a break from his novel), I have been tossing about the idea of writing a large fan fic for Star Control detailing Zelnick's entire adventure. Now, I know what you're thinking: "WTF? Get the hell out, n00b!" but let me explain. My idea is to start from the begginning of the game, probably including the events from their departure on Vela in more detail, and continuing until the very end. The storyline IS excellent, and I DON'T want to change ANYTHING that happens in the game. I DO however, want to detail more closely into the life of the crew. Whatever happens to Ensign Rigby (who, I believe, is the fellow who studies that moonbase), how do the people feel about all that's going on around them?

In effect, I'd like to detail the universe of Star Control in more ways than just through the eyes of the Captain. My ideas thus far are mostly just some sketchy character ideas, and a few close calls I've had in previous games that might make climactic moments during the course of the story (it's not going to be a run and gun Die Hard-style action story, because those suck. But every so often, people have had enough with delving into people's lives, and want to see them do something). Here are some I've had:

-A first officer: I know what you're thinking: CLICHE! CLICHE! CLICHE! But having grown up in a military family, and having a 3 year stint in the Air Cadet program, everybody in charge has a 2nd in Command. So don't go too hard on me just for this guy's position.

What I'm thinking is that this fellow is older, one of the higher ranked scientists on the mission to Vela. He resents not being in charge of the vessel, and as such acts arrogantly around the much younger Zelnick, often makes the wrong remark at the wrong moment, and can cause quite a bit of trouble with inter-crew politics (like office politics, but on a spaceship, if you need some way to envision him. :P ). He is NOT an evil person however, and he wants humanity to be safe more than anything. He just thinks he can do a  better job, and secretly hopes that one day Zelnick will piss off the wrong Alien.

(Remember these are sketches, not a finalized idea!)

-The Shuttle Crew: Who does all that mining? Who nabs those aliens? Why, it's the shuttle crew! My idea was to fill this crew with the people who get mentioned (very briefly!) whenever a shuttle of yours finds something on a planet (for instance, Xenobiologist Rigby!). I'm pretty sure the SCWiki has something listing all these one sentence characters, and these are the kind of characters who deserve some fleshing out! Led by Lt. Robinson (he reports to you after the Spathi hide under the slave shield, leaving behind their moon base), these fellas will be in charge of mining minerals from the planets (I have an idea for a sort of machine attached to the shuttle, which could be used for this, but that's sketchy as well), nabbing those creatures for the Melnorme and Admiral Zex, and (in a rash display of creative liscencing, I know) occassionally meeting with aliens or doing essential repairs on the ship while in deep space.

-Fwiffo: Everybody knows who killed Kowalski, Fritz, Chin, O'Donnell, and all three of the Liebermann Triplets. I suspect that there would have been quite a bit of drama going on in the confines of the Vindicator after that little display. I'd like to fully go into the crew's thoughts about this Spathi.

-A brief visit to the Zoq-Fot-Pik planet: The crew deserves some shore leave once in a while, right? Unfortunately, in this case, it is right after the Flagship removes the Ur-Quan ship that was previously nuking it. A nice chance to detail the lives of those people forced to rebuild after an Ur-Quan attack.

---

There would be much more, of course, but these are just some rough ideas. Anything action-oriented in this story will be something that took place in the game. How it will work, is that I will play through the game, and write as I go along. There will be long pauses between playing the game and writing, however. I don't want this to turn into some sort of walk-through shenanigan, because that's not what it is. Rather than jumping from important event to important event, the time between these game events will be for enriching the story line, revealing more insight into the characters, and for the relationships between all such characters to be made clear. I'd like to say that rather than these being the intermission between space battles and diplomatic relations, space battles and diplomatic relations are intermissions between the character development.

Tell me what you think of this idea, and do speak up if this has been done before. I'm not asking any of you to do all the work for me, but it would be nice for you guys to put forward some character ideas/interesting character development scenarios. Also, don't be afraid to suggest very slight storyline changes as concerned to the actual game. I have some slight altercations in mind, none of which will probably affect the storyline in a serious way. One such idea is certain members of the crew actually meeting Aliens in person, rather than through a viewscreen (though, never with such aliens that are obviously not believable, such as an Ilwrath or an Orz), such as at the Crimson Corporation Orbital Station (I believe that the Druuge planet has one of these, because I don't remember actually ever touching a druuge planet with my ship. I may be mistaken, and if so tell me. :P ), the trade off to Admiral ZEX (With unhappy results, of course, ending with ZEX trying to keep the Shofixti and promptly being eaten by the monster, while the Captain flees back to his shuttle), and the later conversations with the Commander (it just makes sense that they would be in person at some point or another, doesn't it?).


Please, send any ideas/suggestions/reasons this will never work in my direction.

P.S.: I'm not a total newcomer to StarControl, or it's forums. I've just lurked a lot until now.

First of all, welcome to the UQM forums.  Did you send an e-mail to Alex Ness?

Also, it's truly awesome that you want to novelize Star Control II.  You're not the only one who wants to write Star Control fiction; there's a few stories at http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/scwc/fan_fiction.shtml.

Writing a fan-made story in the Star Control universe is a great way of showing TFB just how important a new Star Control game is.

You have some nice ideas about showing things from the crew's perspective; that would illustrate things that aren't shown directly in the game.

I don't want to tell you how to write (I've never written fan stories, or anything like that; just essays for my classes), but it would be cool to novelize the famous Star Control ship melees too; for example, fighting Slylandro probes, dreadnoughts, etc.

If you have any doubts about the validity of your storyline, just look at the UQM wiki, google, or ask someone about it.

Someone wrote a book called "Star Control: Interbellum", and it is considered a horrible book because it says things about the aliens that are completely wrong (I think there was something in there about polite Ilwrath, or something).  I'm 110% sure you'd do a better job than this person.

Hi,

Yeah, my novelization WILL include space battles. The only one of which I have in mind at the moment is based off of a previous game (from about 6 or 7 months ago, so not that long) in which I got to the Arilou portal too late and found myself surrounded by Slylandro probes, with 2 weeks before the bloody thing opened up again.

But yeah, hopefully I'll be able to do a half-decent job on this. I hope to have a chapter detailing the departure from Vela to the Commander's agreement to aid in fighting the Ur-Quan by the end of January (it will probably be done before this, but don't want to get punted if something goes wrong and I need edits. :P ). This will have many of the things I listed above, including the mining, the ship battles you mentioned (against the Ilwrath), and many of the characters will be introduced. I hope to stay very rigid to the games story, and will be playing it through as I write to ensure that I miss NOTHING.

I HAVE seen some of the other fictions, and I'd have to say that most of them are VERY good, and if any of those authors want to collaborate with me on this project, I'd be more than willing to work with them on it. :)


EDIT: Incidentally, I've got some rather interesting questions. These would stump me for hours if I didn't ask.

- I know Zelnick is only a technically correct name for the captain, but is there any first name to go with Zelnick? John Zelnick? Adam Zelnick? Julian Zelnick? Valdez Zelnick? Fievel Zelnick? Unzervaultian Zelnick?

-Where do the other ships in the fleet go? Do they just fly beside the Precursor Tug all the time? Since the Precursor ship is so big, could they possibly fit inside/latch themselves to the sides of the ship?

Do it. Please.

I personally consider them flying with the main ship a la a famous scifi series airing now. Installing a hyperdrive into the ships wouldn't be too hard, as they install an emergency escape unit almost instantly on production/retrieving the ships. I believe there is a topic with thoughts about this on the forums somewhere already, lumme just look for it...

This one might be useful, though I have not read it entirely:

http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=3228.0

Ah, here is the other I remembered, though an old topic:

http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=3015.0

Thanks for all the response guys. :D

Last night I got some work done, writing my way up to the Vindicator's first arrival at the space station. I know it doesn't seem like that much, but I got 5 pages on it. At the rate I'm going, I can churn out one page for each one hour of work. My first chapter, detailing Vindicator's arrival at Sol, the Ur-Quan Probe Transmission, the Space Station, mining the minerals on one of the planets (Mercury, I think, I'll check on that), the battle with the Ilwrath avenger, the confrontation and recruitment with Fwiffo, and finalizing itself with the departure with Sol; will probably be available in, at most, two weeks times.

Also, as to the flying along with the ship, what about the Arilou's Portal Builder thingamabobby (the thing that sends you out into green space. :P )? Are all of the ships equipped with that too? If not, do they somehow attach themselves to the Vindicator (I'm thinking of some sort of cable, looking something like what modern planes use to refuel each other)?

The Arilou quasispace portal spawner?  Yes, all the Arilou Skiffs are equipped with that.

You'll find that very few (if any at all, I'm thinking) of your ships are Arilou Skiffs. :P

*spoiler*



You actually get 4 I believe once you contact the Arilou and return to starbase. And it is still a Portal spawner, keyword being portal there.

Ah, so you're right. My mistake, I had been thinking of it as being similar to Hyperspace, in that you just ported the whole ship into a different dimension.

One thing I would personally like in a Star Control story is a bit more insight into the alien cultures. My favourite SC aliens, as everyone who knows me can attest to, are the Yehat and the Arilou. However, I suppose that there won't be many (if any) Yehat or Arilou crewmembers on board the Vindicator. Of course, there's the Skiff pilots the Arilou send when Zelnick finds their home, and the rebel Yehat do send all the fully-crewed Terminators they can spare. I imagine that Zelnick and the pilots of his support craft do have some kind of meetings every now and then to coordinate their actions, that'd allow you to introduce some alien characters who aren't in the crew per se.

However --- the reason for the sudden price drop for crewmembers when Zelnick drops the cryopods with frozen Shofixti maidens in Tanaka's tender care is, of course, that thousands and thousands of young Shofixti start showing up on the Earth Starbase. Some of the Shofixti crew that ends up on the Vindicator will be only months old. You could get some interesting characters out of that, I suppose. It also makes sense that the New Alliance races send crew members to the Starbase, aside from their pilots --- I mean, it makes very little sense for humans to be of much use as crew on, say, a Spathi ship. You'd pretty much expect a Spathi ship to have equipment designed for pincers, for example. And how do the Arilou Skiff pilots get along with any Orz Nemesis pilots Zelnick recruits, given the.... tense relations between those two races?

(I once toyed with the idea of making a Star Control MUD, since I'm good at describing settings and coming up with story ideas, but terrible at all the aspects of writing that deals with describing human emotion, motivation and such. I dropped the idea, though, as I don't have the time to maintain a MUD.)

Speaking of races, any thoughs of what the Spathi look like? I once had a thought that they have insect-like legs that resemble their arms, but other theories include having them just slither around like snakes, or with little green legs.

As far as I'm aware (from Hayes detailing of the Orz arriving at the starbase) whenever you ally with a new race, they have dudes and dudettes and dudons running around all over the place in the base, with the exception of the more secretive ones (so there'd be a lack of Arilou, but there'd be Zoq-Fot-Piks running around all over. What do you guys think of the blue vent thing hopping around, or the eyeball thing moving on what APPEARS to be stubby legs at the bottom of its body, or the green plant thing hopping/pulling itself along with it's tentacles? Alternatively, they could just use those circles they sit on as vehicles).

I'd imagine that the StarRunner would HAVE to have at least SOME humans on it, since it's only Fwiffo all by himself (though, he is skilled enough to kill five dudes by himself).

If you have any ideas on where you'd like the races to head, speak your mind on all of them, the story can always use more detail. ^_^


EDIT: And most writers have the problem you've described. I'd say just stick with it, and practice practice practice at it! Detailing psychological emotion is difficult to do, and if after ages of trying you still can't do it, just do what Dan Brown did and write about Jesus. Then everyone will read your work. ;)

All kidding aside though, the best way is to imagine the people in your mind as if they were close personal friends of yours. The deaths in my stories are usually very sad (unless it's just some random bloke on the street who gets in a car accident or something) because I put more detail into my characters than I write on paper, and they usually end up like close personal friends to me. Creepy as that sounds. :P

Just talk with the Spathi high council and you will see how they look like.

Or look at this photoshop picture  :P http://www.worth1000.com/emailthis.asp?entry=47347

You won't ever see Arilou, Pkunk or rebel Yehat striding the halls of the Earth Starbase --- they're sympathetic to your cause, and they give you ships, but they don't form a formal alliance with you, and don't send you the usual delegations of ship pilots and crew. That's why you have to seek them out for them to give you ships; you can't build or crew them yourself. Hayes also says that the Utwig drop off a few ship commanders and the Jugger blueprints, and then leave. So I guess there won't be many of them around, and I suppose that most of the crewmen aboard their ships will be humans (they do look to be physiologically humanoid, though, so it makes sense that a human can do an Utwig's job).

So, races that will be present on the base, and perhaps in the Vindicator crew: Earthling, Syreen, Zoq-Fot-Pik, Orz (shudder), Chmmr, Supox, and lots and lots of Shofixti. Depending on how you complete the game, there may also be Spathi and Thraddash at some points.

As for the Spathi: They call themselves "meta-mollusks", and compare themselves to clams. If they're mollusks, I think they probably look like snails, slugs, or some kind of bizarre land cephalopod (land-squid, land-octopus, or such). As for the Zoq-Fot-Pik, I've always assumed the flying discs are their preferred mode of locomotion. As regards Fwiffo's "skill": I think Barely-Armed Puny Planet Lander versus Spathi Eluder might be a bit of an unfair fight. ;-)

The races..... Well, I'd like to see more of the Arilou. I like them. I'd like to see more of both their benevolent and their mischievous natures. The fact that even during the war, they maintained friendly relations with the Umgah (of all races), speaks volumes about them. Personally, I'd probably make sure to not actually *answer* any of the questions the Arilou raise, but do drop some more hints. A good way to show the reader more of Arilou culture would be to let the Vindicator crew get some shore leave on Falayaralfali. I'd like to have a Yehat as one of the main characters, although it probably makes little sense, given their allegiance to their traitorous Queen early in the game. Personally, if I were to write a SC2 story, I'd probably not let it be about the Vindicator crew, though --- I'd either let the protagonist be Hayes, or some alien commander. Of course, alien main characters have some challenges to them, one of which is that the reader is human and might have a hard time identifying with some odd pterodactyl or bug-eyed psychic Martian. ;-)

Alternately, some pirate gang, maybe led by humans in an old SC1-era Cruiser.

As for me writing: Nah. I'm good at coming up with worlds, but as said, not too good at populating them with "real" humans. But that's OK, I found another way. I gamemaster a good RPG set in a homemade universe, and I code on computer games (that I never finish ;) ) in my, sadly lacking nowadays, free time. That works better for me.

You could flesh out the Yehat Civil war a bit... Facts, theories wild speculations among the crew why the queen yielded to the UQ, fed by the fact that one of the Yehat crew might actually board the Vindicator (hey, gameplaywise you can divide crew amongst your ships, taking crew from a Yehat ship and putting them on a Pkunk vessel, or an Arilou on an Orz ship, write about that ;) ) .

I can't imagine Arilous ever going on board an Orz ship. I'm sorry, it's just not happening. :P

I'll be checking out the Arilou Planet to see if a shore leave is actually plausible. I have this funny feeling that they tell you quite clearly not to go down. :P If it's possible, I'll give it a try, though. I'll be doing some more work tonight, though Christmas Feasting is fast approaching (I celebrate Christmas on the 24th, its a Scandinavian thing). Hopefully I'll have detailed the arrival at the starbase and the mining of mercury by the end of tonight. (When I last left off, they had just stumbled across the Ur-Quan message probe)

Have it as a sarcastic, anti high-authority Yehat, who was stranded on Earth when the Slave Shield went up when he was only a fresh recruit, and has been turned slightly bitter from the relationships gained and lost there, and the fact his own kind has been turned to the Ur-Quan.


Overall, this sounds wonderful, I hope this does well! :D.

"%&#@! The miner almost got fried and everyone in it too. Where can I find some good cheap replacement?" *glares through a porthole to one of the fleet's ships*.

Remember, it ain't a democrazy in the fleet.  Zelnick is pulling the strings and although he (you) makes good decisions all and all, there may be some questionable ones as well. How often did you send a miner down to a planet just to see "how long it lives", and then reloading the game? Now imagine you can't reload... Good drama storywise...

Just imagine the horror of the crew hearing they're taking an internship on a Druuge vessel...

Or the crew's surprise when they see a Pkunk ship being blown up in the distance, only to have it reappear again...

Heck, you might twist it in a humerous side a bit and make everyone get popcorn and 3d glasses when a space battle between 2 ships ensues...

(spoilerish) Make the guy that guards the hold suddenly hear voices when that top secret thing has been picked up from the Umgah Homeworld.

The whole idea of shore leave on a planet is a bit too much for me... We're fighting a war here, fight or flight. There's no time to frolic around picking daisies (besides, pick the wrong kind of daisy and it bites ya).

Oh well, hope that gives you ideas...

I do intend to have lots of trading between crew members between the Starbase and the Vindicator (I have an important character in mind that will join the away party from the Starbase), but I'm not sure if there WERE Yehats on Earth when the shield went up. :P Unless I find something contradicting it, I'll consider it though. ^_^ I don't want to go overboard on anti high-authority characters though. :P

Some characters that I'm 95% sure will be included (the other 5% is if someone says: "No way, that's not possible" and most of them are 100% sure. :P) are:

-Ensign Erika Graves: She's our pilot (since the Captain finds it hard to monitor both the ship AND the controls at the same time. Zelnick shows her around the controls a bit on the journey to Earth, and you'll find that her skill starts out kinda shabby but improves as times goes on). She was born on Unzervault, around the same time Zelnick was. Not a terribly aggressive person, she often has to watch the Captain and Sparks (see below) argue over the smallest thing. Later on, there will be several instances where she wonders "If I was better at flying this thing, would we be in this mess?" Kind of cookie cutter at the begginning, but I plan to flesh her out more and more.

-John Sparks: He's the first officer. An older man, who walks with a cane, he has his own ideas of how the ship should be run. Not particularly trusting of others (his suggestion upon arriving at the starbase is to blow it to bits), he often speaks without thinking clearly. Nonetheless, his deeds are always (in his mind) for the protection of man kind. He's not grasping for power, or wealth, or anything like that. He simply wants to do the right thing, and stay alive long enough to see it happen.

-Lieutenant Louie Robinson: He's the guy in charge of the mining shuttle. While on Unzervault, he kept the peace by becoming something of a one man police force. Many people attribute him to preventing a total disarray in the colony. He also just so happens to be a respected leader, always able to keep a clear head in a tough situation. He surrounds himself with all sorts of people, a constant need for companionship driving him on. Despite all this, he's not a perfect person. He has a tendency for sudden bursts of anger, and can storm out of a room for little reason. It's really a shame, most people are drawn to him.

-Ensign Robert "Marshmallow" Halloway: His nickname came from a girlfriend of his on Unzervault. She claimed he was sweet, and sticky (since she couldn't get away from him). Granted, the girl later broke up with him in a rather unpleasant way, but the name has stuck. Nowadays, he pilots the mining shuttle, with Crewman Jenkins as his backup. At only seventeen when the ship first arrives at Earth, he finds himself striving to look good in the eyes of his superiors. He's not sucking up, by any means, but he spends hours pressing his uniform, keeping his mining suit clean, maintaining tidy quarters. You never know when someone important might come by for a visit, right? Because of his professional duty, Robinson chose him to be his second in command. Marshmallow aims to please.

-Lieutenant Marco DeYoung: Hayes right hand, this guy basically spends his day sucking up to Hayes, bringing reports to Hayes, keeping Hayes' office clean. He doesn't like it, but he's not a very charismatic, or attractive, fellow. So he just keeps bootlicking, hoping for his big break.

-Ensign Carl "Traveller" Frakes: Why is his name Traveller? Because he's always off where he's not supposed to be. Eventually, Hayes stuck him in the waste disposal room, but  when the Vindicator arrives, he decides he'll give him his big chance to see the galaxy. Eventually becoming a valued member of the crew, although often a trouble maker, he is often the first to arrive when the ship gets damaged. With one eye on the horizon (and the other on Erika Graves), many of the crew members find him inspirational. Despite his frequent sarcasm and troublemaking, his real wish is to see the blue sky again. Something he hasn't seen since he was three years old.

-Ensign Jeremy Rigby: An expert when it comes to technology, he finds himself drafted to the mining team to operate the drill. As a child on Unzervault, his mother used to pamper him non stop. His mother also just so happenned to be pregnant when they landed, and should never have been on the Tobermoon in the first place. The first baby born on Unzervault, only four months after their arrival, he was often praised as 'the colonial baby'. He spent his childhood reading up on alien technology, building model ships, and gazing at wonder as the Vindicator was being built. The effect?

He's kind of a wimp. But a handy wimp. Just don't ask him to do anything dangerous.

Unfortunately, his mother died on Unzervault, and it often haunts him that he never knew who his father was.

***

These are ALSO just some sketchy outlines so far. Pop in your own character ideas too. :)


As to Koowluh's post: Deaths happen in EVERY battle, right? Ehhh, not so much. I'd be stuck on grieving for the whole bloody novel if I did that. :P Not every mining death is going to be listed, and not every ship battle death is going to be included either. :P

Even in a war, people get breaks. My friend in Afghanistan got a month off to go to India with his wife. :P

Remember that we're looking at these people as if they were REAL people. If Zelnick sent a miner down and said "Don't come back until you're all dead.", that would be Sparks big excuse to take over. :P Besides, on the more hostile planets, everything is happenning so fast that Zelnick doesn't have much control over it anyways.

Remember that the story is not just about Zelnick, it's about the crew. If the crew all die... well, that's kind of uninteresting. :P

I AM considering having somebody taken prisoner by the Druuge, though I figured I'd let them come back. :P

Also, in a rash display of total ungamedness, what about some sort of in-person fight with a Thraddash boarding party? :O

You've got the right idea, dramawise, but you need to remember that ZELNICK isn't playing a game. He's fighting for his survival. ;)

They don't go into any details of who or what were situated on the slave-shield planets, or how it's affected life down there. I would suspect that the Yehat would have bases situated because to be frank, they have the most in common, and the friendliest relationship with hunams, second only by the Supox.

That's another thing, can we expect a 9 foot Supox to be part of the crew? :D

Tell you what, write up a plan for this 9 foot Supox that makes sense, take into consideration that it won't be appearing until Zelnick and company come across them, and I'll pop it in. :P

Regardless, it'll be months before I get to the Supox anyways. :P

I've just finished up with the disastrous mining predicament on Mercury. Probably the first exciting scene you'll come across.

Well, it could be mentioned by some crew members something along the lines of  "Guess who came back from Pluto in a bodybag..." or "Last hit on the cruiser took out 3 crew quarters." It might be that one of your mains keeps a written record with photograph in a book somewhere (most commonly known as the keeper of the dead) . As a macabre sidenote, you could have someone take a picture of the crew sent down the planet in a miner "just in case they don't come back".

Oh well, plenty of ideas to go around, just here to inspire you...  ::)

EDIT: oh , and remember that the game is full of humour. You wouldn't want to write a dramatization of it ;)

Supox bio coming up!

(http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/8831/sotaqg7.png)

Name : Sato

Age : Undetermined

Gender : N/A - Closer Masculine properties

Job : Negotiator/Ambassador

Intro : When the Negotiator for the Vindicator disapears without a trace (or not), Star Control places Sato, a leading pioneer in many debates on the homeworld of the Supox, on the ship. As soon as he arrives he begins greeting everyone (literally, everyone) on-board and begins to ask far too many questions. It becomes aparant that he will end up annoying people more than actually gaining trust in them. After he's done with the Janitors, the Engineers, and the likes, he finally greets the Captain with an ever sunshine-like state of mind.

Personality : Freakishly friendly and understanding, but does not know when to stop being that, can also come across as if he is receiting a phrase book.

Possible Events :

First contact with the Thraddash : A Thraddash Torch transports near the Vindicator, demanding just what the hell an "impressively large and powerful battle ship" was doing outside of Thraddash control. Sato begins negotiations, which quickly turns into a certain psychiatric session with the Thraddash commander contemplating his situation, his life, and his actions. Despite what is deemed as "remarkable progress" the Torch begins attacking anyway, and is promptly destroyed.

Pkunk Conversation : Sato is talking to a Pkunk officer, discussing life and all it's wonders, but seems to be playing the "nodding game" in order to make the Pkunk feel better. Unbeknowst to him, the Pkunk knows he's doing this, and thus is continuing to talk to make Sato feel beter, so the vicious cycle continues.




 

I like it! :D

Though, you'll probably find that there really isn't a set negotiator in charge (I always figured the Cap did all the talking, he IS the leader, after all), a ship psychiatrist is always handy. :)

Sato will get its place in the story for sure (though probably not for quite some time).


Koowluh: Although there are quite a few comedic elements, Star Control isn't a slapstick comedy fanfare, either. If I were to write about Zelnick gleefully sending crew members to their deaths, the crewmen giggling all gossip-like over that new fella who died, the captain farting on the bridge and saying "excuse me, hehehe"; I'd probably get tied to a stake and shot. :P

Consider that these people are risking their lives every day. Any moment, their number could go up. I dunno if you've ever had an acquantaince, someone you'd talked to once or twice but weren't really friends, die; but when you hear about it, you don't joke about it unless you're seriously mentally unstable. Even someone you don't like can slap you in the face with their death. That factor is worth triple if it could've just as easily been you.

I usually wouldn't post just to correct someone's spelling, but as this misspelling might otherwise turn up in your story, I note that it's "Unzervalt", not "Unzervault".

I typed a whole story here, but it boiled down to one sentence: strike a balance  ;D

Something tells me that that would be a bad idea.



I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound pleasant. I don't think human beings have quite what it takes to endure Falayalaralfali at this stage in our evolution.

As far as the Star Control fanfic/novelization goes, Grakelin, I heartily endorse it! It sounds like you already have some very good ideas, and going to this group of SC2 fans to ask questions is a smart thing as well. I'm sure they'll tell you if something isn't adding up. ;)

Just a few pieces of advice from little ol' me:

I've found that by reading through the SC2 manual, role-playing resource guide, and actual quotes from the game, you can come up with a vast wealth of information on the aliens that you might not have noticed or even thought of before. I mean, before reading the manual thoroughly, I would've never pictured the average height of a Yehat as being just shy of ten feet!

The pages that contain the game dialogue are here (http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/quotes/) if you need them, by the way. Just remember to take "starcontrol" out of the URLs for the separate pages, otherwise they won't work.("http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/starcontrol/sc2/quotes/chmmr.txt" becomes "http://starcontrol.classicgaming.gamespy.com/sc2/quotes/chmmr.txt", for example)

Sometimes it's just the little things that can make dialogue seem odd or unbelievable. Going through the quotes is a good way to get a feel of the attitude and "voice" of the different races.

For example, the Utwig tend to name and describe things in very grandiose ways. The Spathi High Council speak much more boldly and can be more sarcastic than regular Spathi. The Umgah have quite a large vocabulary despite some lingual quirks like leaving the words "is" or "are" out of their sentences (ie. They can use such words/terms as "gratitude", "compulsion", "vigorous", "sufficient", "juveniles", and "legitimate" correctly and effortlessly). The VUX seem to be very quick, creative thinkers, and are eloquent as well. This can be seen in the way that they can rattle off a variety of long and descriptive insults and exclamations without pause or difficulty.

And so on and so forth...

I hope that's of some help.

Yep, I'll second the thought that you need to find the manual, and role playing guide, Grakelin.  There's a lot more story line, even before the game starts that you should probably be willing to flesh out, like how Zelnick got to be captain (maybe resentments from others in the crew to happen later on?), the building of the flagship on Unzervalt, the trip there, how the original captain died, and so forth.

Other than what's in the game there's a LOT of backstory in that which wouldn't hurt to be fleshed out.  Remember, try to be as 100% consistent with the game dialogue as you cna.

And another thought, how about a story arc about what it's like to be assigned to a Shofixti ship?  Hayes talks about that one, actually.  "Boy, our captain sure has a death wish!"

A better way to read SC2 quotes would be sa-matra.net's Quote Databank:
http://www.sa-matra.net/quotes/

Has some highlighting of questions and such. And it looks awesome. :P

But are these collections complete? Do these lines come from the PC version of SC2, or from UQM?
One could always just look at the dialog files from UQM.

On the top of the page it says "Welcome to the original Star Control 2 Quotes page!"

I didn't even know that another quote page existed besides the one on the Pages of Now and Forever! Woo! This'll be a little bit easier for me, not to mention Grakelin.


Well, it has the MetaChron dialogue, so it's from the PC version. It also looks complete to me so far.

Thanks for all the feedback, guys. :D

I already have a special folder where I keep the manual (I found it on Underdogs a long, long time before I ever had this idea. :P ), and often read through it just to make sure I get my facts straight. I'll be looking into these links you provided, as well. :)

The quotes page will be a HUGE help. At the begginning the game NPCs don't have much original dialogue, as the story won't allow it (probes don't have real conversations, and Hayes has to be to-the-point due to the power shortage), and I'd been tediously copying down their subtitles as they spoke. :P

Thanks for the spelling correction, I had been so sure it was Unzervault. :P

As to the Arilou thing, that's what I figured. I had a feeling that there was something keeping humans off the Arilou planet, it had just been so long since then that I didn't remember. :P There's plenty of planetary stuff throughout, though, so don't think you'll be staring off into space (literally) the whole time. :P

The Sa-Matra.net quotes all came from the PC version of the game, back from when Mudry was hacking out all the contents of the PKG files several years ago, except for the Yehat Rebel quotes, which were added much later and came from the 3DO version. :)

So it's mechanically copied. Good.

I like the idea of a Star Control II novel, I've beaten the game on many occasions, a few suggestions is to look at all the dialogue even what happens if you do bad things to good species to see reactions....

A good story, I'd like to have is the trip to Eta Vulpeculae II (Androsynth homeworld), when Burkowski finds info on what happened to the Androsynth, and reasearch into IDF, also the screaming and things that come after him... perhaps some mention with what the Arilou have been protecting humanity through their modifications on us, to make us invisible, and Burkowski looked, and when you look you can and will be seen, you do not want to be seen... I think it is Hawthorne that reports for Burkowski.... though not sure, would have to play that part again, but it would be an interesting part to put in... also get some Orz input on how they do not like talking about Androsynth (they will attack you if you mention it too much) also stories about how there are no more Androsynth, only Orz...

For names, try for ship captains to use names that you see in melee combats, like Bob for Umgah, perhaps Bob is in your fleet when you get those 3 Umgah ships, I always found Umgah names weird, all those names you cannot pronounce, then comes Bob...

For Earthling captains, there is Kirk... hehe Star Trek, lol... you could also take other names which are other species like this, from names which they use when they fight, it is captain names, but would give you good ideas for name genres for the different alien races...

That is my suggestions hope you like some of that...

Sorry for the few days of absence, team, it IS the holidays after all. ;)

I like most of the ideas put forward so far. Please note, however, that my E-mail is NOT an applicable ways of reaching me. It is VERY strongly filtered into the Junk Mail folder, and I hardly ever notice it unless I'm looking for one of those automated e-mails. So for the fella who DID send me an e-mail, you're lucky I found it. :D

Try stickin' to PMs or posts at first, please, and then I can add you to my E-mail contacts list afterwards. :)

I dont think ur story should feature the black spathi squadron but a rumour would be nice  ;)

Hello to all, I'm new here - saw this topic and decided to register :D
Here's my two cents on the story, hope that helps...

I passed Star Control II several times, but I can't remember one thing - how Arilou reacted if you came to Falayalaralfali with Orz ships in your force?

Zelnick seems to be an Eastern European surname - either Czech, or Hungarian, so the Captain's full name may be something like Jiri Zelnick, or Ferenc Zelnick, or stuff :)
For some reason I want Zelnick himself to head the landing party on Mercury (the very first one, to acquire radioactives for the Earth space station).

I liked Fwiffo a lot; once his trusty Eluder was with me for the entire game, and I wiped out the Ur-Quan/Kohr-Ah joint defence of Sa-Matra with his ship. Maybe, it's worth to try and do something like that in the story?

A scene of first meeting with the Melnorme came to mind... Zelnick miscalculates the fuel consumption (for example, using too much fuel on landing expedition), and the Vindicator floats helplessly in space somewhere near Sol system. There may be a big argument between Zelnick and his exec, then there's Red Alert and a Slylandro Probe arrives; they hastily prepare to fight, but an unknown ship (Greenish) comes by, wipes out the Probe (possibly - with the self-destruct code) and then contacts the Vindicator.

The Glowing Rod and the Wimbli's Trident definitely have to have some use, rather than being just the pieces of junk :D

Maybe - a small humorous moment when some human tries to smoke a Thraddash cigar...

Heh, that's a lot :)

This isn't dead. Just coming along slowly. Many other things I am working on at present. Stay Tuned.

Some things I'd like to see in a Star Control story:

Right from the get go, Fwiffo is leading a dangerous life.  In the early game he's often the ship's only defense against Sylandro probes, Ilwrath, etc...  That's a lot of pressure for a guy who, even by Spathi standards, is a coward.  I'd imagine Zelnick would have to practically threaten him with death to get him to captain his vessel at times.  But if he lasts, it's because he's also good.  Damn good.  He should be there in the final battle against the Sa-Matra, and I wouldn't mind seeing him save the day, and learning what it takes to be a hero.

Every human crewmember has dedicated their lives to beating the Ur-Quan and freeing Earth, but that doesn't mean tensions won't be there if lives are lost needlessly.   Hayes will lambast you some if you go through too many of his men, and I can imagine a VERY uncomfortable discussion between the Earth fleet veteran and a smart, but young and inexperienced, captain.  Furthermore, how many lander mission deaths will the crew take before they start to wonder, openly, if Zelnick's the right man for the job?  A definite character moment for your first officer.

Diplomacy is an important aspect of the game, and a mistake can be lethal.  Particularly when you have a certain talking pet on board with a bint for practical jokes ("Hey bird brain, got any fruit loops?  I mean, um...CRAP!")  So, definitly should have a mis-step here and there, to show if nothing else how different alien cultures can take different things badly.

And finally, definitly emphasize the clue gathering.  If you haven't played before, and weren't always paying attention to the dialogue, there were more than a few "Now what the hell do I do?" moments.   Would Zelnick confer with his senior officers, like Picard, or with one or two confidants, like Kirk and Spock and McCoy, or just brood alone in his quarters till he thought of something?

The wait is over! Here is Chapter 1!

---

Star Control II – The Ur-Quan Masters

Prologue

“There were many great battles. Earth and her partners in the Alliance of Free Stars against the evil Ur-Quan and its Hierarchy of Battle Thralls. And the Ur-Quan were winning. Meanwhile, on the edge of the known frontier, an amazing discovery was made far beneath the surface of an alien world. A huge underground city, filled with the technological wonders of an advanced alien race, the Precursors, who vanished a thousand centuries ago. But then the main Ur-Quan fleet broke through the Alliance’s defensive line, isolating the planet, stranding the scientists a hundred light years from earth. They waited hopefully for a rescue vessel, which never came.

“20 years have passed. We, the survivors of the research mission have colonized this world. We continued our investigation of the underground city, and we have discovered its purpose. It is a factory. A factory for building starships! But there aren’t enough materials to make a complete vessel. We can finish only the skeleton of one starship. But that must be enough...”


--Professor Jules Farnsworth, A Personalized Autobiography


Chapter 1
Sol


“In-bred, foolish, filthy, wallowing insects!”

   The Pkunk pilot’s voice was tinny, muffled slightly by the sound of weapons fire as it came over the Avenger’s intercom. The Ilwrath captain, prone to such rages, smashed his claws into the control panel. Sparks flew around him, burning his legs. The spider-like creature shouted in relief. Dogar and Kazon were still with him, punishing him for not killing those bastard birds sooner!

   The Pkunk Fury flew in close to the Avenger, its wings fluttering as it zipped around and around the Ilwrath ship. The Fury would be better suited to being called a shuttle than a ship, very closely resembling a dragonfly. Not that the Pkunk, or the Ilwrath, had ever heard of a dragonfly of course. At the moment, dozens of these Furies were zooming around, and a single Avenger, sleek, pink, like a bird of prey swooping in for the kill, soared through the middle of them. Some of the less skilled pilots found themselves crashed up against the Avenger’s hull, many still yelling wildly at the Ilwrath as they died.

   A burst of flame burst forth from the Avenger’s front end, setting several of the Pkunk ships ablaze. The rest of the tiny vessels zoomed in, firing their weapons at their foe. The searing hot metal pellets crashed into the battleship, chunks of metal flaking off. As the Furies spread away, recharging their machine guns, the Avenger began to flicker, seemingly dematerializing. The Ilwrath were activating a cloaking shield. One lonesome Pkunk took this opportunity to charge in.

   There was a burst of machine gun fire, an explosion, and the Avenger popped back into view almost immediately. The Pkunk let out a scream of joy.

“I got him, I got him!” he yelled, pumping his feathery fists into the air. “The spirits are on our side today, brothers!”

A burst of flame, and the cheering stopped. It would only be a matter of time before the rest of the Furies followed.


***



   Zelnick’s eyes flicked open as his alarm bleeped over and over. The ceiling was quite some distance above him. Whoever these Precursors were, they were a lot bigger than humans were. Zelnick felt tiny in the halls of the Vindicator. Clicking off the button on his alarm, he stretched, pulled himself out of bed, and got himself dressed. Six in the morning, ship time. He wasn’t used to the twenty four hour clock. On Unzervault, the days seemed so much different. But, if the others could do it, so could he. Burton often said the same thing about the Unzervault time!

   Burton didn’t say anything now. She was dead, fried like an egg, her coffin now floating around somewhere in space. All because of that goddamned probe. It had come out of hyperspace, two red spheres connected by a thin strip of blue metal, electricity crackling all around it. That electricity had promptly zapped the Earthling Cruiser, the Tobermoon, and proceeded to hyperspace away. Before Burton had died, she had given command of the Vindicator, the giant Precursor ship, to Zelnick.

   Only nineteen years old, and promoted from pilot to Captain in a matter of hours. Of course, with his leadership responsibilities, he needed to train other pilots to fly the ship for him. If he was going to keep that tug flying through the thick of things, he didn’t want to have to be multi-tasking.

   Of the several candidates he had sifted through during the travel to Earth, the one most suited for the job was Erika Graves. Like Zelnick, Graves had been born on Unzervault, within a few months of the Captain. She wasn’t perfect, but she was pretty damned good at flying the Vindicator, considering that she had never had any opportunity in her life to practice. Within the past few weeks, he had helped her better her ability. Granted, the extra maneuvering the ship was doing had knocked several days off their travel time, but in the end, Zelnick figured, it didn’t really matter.
   Zelnick walked down the huge corridors of the ship, his eyes still red from sleep. Other crew members were already running around. Everything was working just fine, but people were always on alert, just in case. It wasn’t a human-built vessel, and there was always the chance that some little peculiarity could cause the deaths of everybody on board. Finally, he walked through the doors at the end of the hall. These doors were normal sized, the bridge on the other side being the only part of the ship that the Unzervaultians had modified. And for good reason. A dozen crewmen and women were working in here, seated in front of control panels on the walls, and in front of the wide view-screen at the head of the room. Erika was already here, seated right in front of the screen, her hands sliding over the panel. In the middle of the room, on a slightly elevated platform, were two leather seats. In front of those seats was a thin table, slanted slightly upwards. On this table lay buttons for communication systems, several blank screens, anything one would ever need. It was like the Swiss Army Knife of control panels. Zelnick sat down on the seat to the left of him.

“Graves,” he called, leaning forward over the table. “Any closer to Sol this morning?” Sol. He hardly believed it was real. The place where his ancestors had lived. One shining jewel of a planet, in a nearly barren solar system. And for millennia, humanity had gone without ever making contact with the people outside the confines of that solar system. Now, he was the outsider.

“Almost there, sir,” Erika replied, keeping her eyes transfixed on the screen ahead of her. The yellow orb, the Sun, shone brightly, its intensity toned down to a viewable range by the ship’s scanners. In front of it, several tiny planets, one of which was bright red. The starmap on Zelnick’s console said it was Earth. But Earth was supposed to be blue, wasn’t it? “If you look closely, you can see something orbiting around that planet. I think it’s a space station. Somebody said there was energy sources coming off of it.”

“So, this is what has become of my beloved homeworld,” came the voice of an elderly man, as he limped across the bridge. John Sparks was one of the scientists who had traveled to Unzervault from Earth, over twenty years ago. He had been forty-five then. Now, at the old age of sixty-five, he tapped his cane here and there as he slowly made his way to the seat next to Zelnick.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

   His leg had gotten the best of him over the years. He rarely walked around when he could help it, spending most of the time on the bridge staring out into the far reaches of space. Carefully resting himself into the chair, he placed the cane beside him, and looked out towards Earth.

“I remember when I first looked upon Earth from space,” he said, with a groan. “It was so beautiful. I remember I could see Australia from where I stood. Now, all I see is a red ball.” His eyes glazed over and he stared at the command console for a long moment.

“We’ll get it back to normal soon, Sparks,” Zelnick said cheerily. “After all, we have the strongest ship in the galaxy, right?” John Sparks gave him a look so strong that the hairs on the back of his head stood up straight. Sparks’ gray hair never stood up straight. Somehow, the old man managed to comb it down every morning before he got to the bridge. Just another reason why so many people respected him, though proper grooming was the least of his abilities.

“If we’ve found something like this, then the Ur-Quan have too,” Sparks replied, his steely blue eyes leaving an imprint on Zelnick’s own. “We’re on an information gathering mission, not a warpath, and you’d do well to remember that.”

Considering that Sparks was only the first officer, he sure liked to boss people around. He looked forward to see a tiny red light flit past the view-screen. A deep, raspy voice filled the room over the loudspeakers.

“Attention, interloper,” it bellowed, a sinister undertone on each word. “Heed this recorded message! This drone-vessel speaks with the voice and authority of the Ur-Quan.”

“So it is the Ur-Quan,” Sparks sighed, slumping in his chair. The voice continued.

“You are trespassing within Ur-Quan space. This world, Earth, may not be approached for any reason.” There was a brief pause. “Nor will hostilities against our orbital platform be tolerated.” Erika squinted at the large, grey anomaly orbiting the Earth.

“I guess I was right,” she mumbled. “I don’t know how happy I am about it, though.”

“In addition, your ship does not respond to standard Hierarchy identification transmissions, and is therefore deemed to be… independent.” The last word dripped with venom, as though the thought of such a thing disgusted the voice.

“This is not permissible,” it went on. “Only subservience shall be tolerated. This drone now leaves to inform the Ur-Quan of your transgressions. You are commanded to remain here and await the arrival of the Ur-Quan. Disobedience will be punished.” The transmission cut out, and the red light

“So guys,” Zelnick said, with a small laugh. “You think we should stay here? We might be in trouble if we don’t!” Sparks glared at him.

“Don’t mock these Ur-Quan so quickly, Zelnick,” he grunted. “They’ll cut you to bits in seconds. And they love to make it slow and tedious.” Zelnick frowned, and turned his attention back to the screen.

“Head for that station, Graves,” he said, a disappointed undertone to his voice. “I want to know exactly what’s inside.”
***
“How long do we have left, DeYoung?” Hayes asked, staring down at the Earth through his office window. That window had been his only source of light for the past six months, the rest of the station almost pitch black. It wasn’t out of choice; they simply couldn’t afford to keep power going all the time.

“Two months, sir,” DeYoung responded, nervously adjusting his uniform. He was a small man, thick round glasses covering half his face. “After that, we can’t hold on to life support any longer.”

“I guess that’s it then,” Hayes sighed, waving DeYoung away with one hand. “Go ahead and tell the crew. I don’t want anymore of them to sit and wonder.” DeYoung nodded solemnly and shuffled out of the room. It was all over. The Ur-Quan had forgotten about them. They were all going to die, and there was nothing they could do. Nobody ever thought they could die this way. He pressed his forehead against one of the large, ironglass windows lined up along the wall, and his eyes suddenly widened.

“Commander Hayes!” He yelled. “Come see this!”


***





One of the crewmen lining the walls tapped a few buttons, and gave the Captain the go ahead. Zelnick nodded and flicked a switch on his command console, a screen instantly blaring up in a static of colour, before settling into the face of a man. Through the screen, he looked to be tall, muscular, more of a soldier than a diplomat. He certainly wasn’t an Ur-Quan, either. He wore a grey uniform, a green badge pinned over his chest. The picture went into static again.

“What’s going on?” Sparks grunted, whacking the console with one solid fist. “Why is the picture so blurry?”

“It’s them, sir,” the crewman responded, shaking slightly. “There’s something wrong with their signal.”

The man came back into view, and he began to speak.

“Attention unidentified space vessel,” he said, his voice distorted. “I am Starbase Commander Hayes of the slave planet Earth. Our Hyperwave broadcasts-”

More static. Zelnick could make out the words “extremely weak, situation critical, energy cores exhausted, scanners and deep radar, not functional.”

“Looks like they’re having some trouble down there,” Zelnick murmured, glancing up at Sparks for a brief moment. Once more, the quality came back into focus, and Commander Hayes spoke clearly.

“We cannot identify your vessel,” came the tinny sound. “Are you the scheduled Hierarchy resupply ship? Repeat, are you the resupply vessel?” Zelnick waited for the static to clear out a bit before responding.

“No,” he said, clearly and loudly into thin air, half expecting someone to hand him a microphone. How could he be heard just through this little screen? “This is the starship Vindicator. We stand ready to assist you.” That was a nice way to finish it off, like in a book. He couldn’t help but smile. Luckily, Hayes didn’t see it through the static.

“The starship what?” He retorted, a look of utter confusion on his face.

“The starship Vin-”

“Nevermind,” Hayes continued, cutting him off. “Look, we won’t last much longer, here’s our situation. According to our oath of fealty to the Ur-Quan, we must maintain this starbase. But we have no space vessels of our own, and the shield prevents us from contacting Earth, so we are totally dependent Ur-Quan supply vessels for everything we need up here. We know there’s a Hierarchy base on the surface of the moon, but we can’t contact them.”

Erika’s eyes shifted from the starbase, over to the grey rock orbiting the planet below. Somewhere down there, there were Ur-Quan just waiting to strike?

“The Ur-Quan were supposed to resupply the base at regular five year intervals,” Commander Hayes continued, after a moment of static. “But we haven’t received anything in almost eight years! What we don’t recycle we can usually synthesize, but we replacement radioactives for our generator energy core. If you can bring us those, we can fabricate the cores ourselves. Are you willing to help us?”

As Zelnick opened his mouth to say yes, Sparks pressed a button the console, muting out the sounds from the starbase.

“It’s an Ur-Quan trap,” he said, his gaze focused on the slave-shielded Earth. “We’ll give them what they need, and they’ll send so many Ur-Quan at us, we won’t know what hit us. They’re just trying to make us do the work for them.”

“There are Humans down there,” Zelnick frowned, shaking his head. “We’re going to help them. I can’t believe you’d even think otherwise.” Before Sparks could reply, he restored sound to the transmission and began his reply.

“We just so happen to have something with us that could help us,” Zelnick said, a slight hint of anger in his voice. He just couldn’t get over Sparks distrust of these people. Who did that stupid old man think he was? “Where can we get these radioactives?”


“The fastest place in this system is Mercury,” Hayes responded, his face positively beaming with relief. “I’m sure you know that it’s the closest to the sun. Be careful, it’s a pretty inhospitable place.”

“I’ll be back in a few days,” Zelnick replied, and switched off his console. Turning to another crewman, he grinned.

“Have Lieutenant Robinson meet with me in two hours.”


***

Lieutenant Robinson was one of the Vindicator’s finest men. That was what Burton had said in her report, before her unfortunate demise. Only a twenty year old Ensign when he had gone to Unzervault, he had quickly made a name for himself as the bravest, strongest, most clever man around. Of course, there were stronger people on Unzervault, and plenty of smarter ones, Robinson made himself noteworthy by becoming something of a detective in the colony. Plenty of people had often gotten miffed at him over his habit of preventing crimes against Farnsworth. But they soon found themselves liking him more and more as he protected everyone from similar crimes.

It was in this way that Unzervault had gone for twenty years without degrading into a barbaric state. It was for this reason that Burton had chosen him to ride along in the Vindicator. And it was for all this that Zelnick decided that he would be in charge of the mining rig.

It was nothing fancy, just a shuttle, but the back opened up to reveal some of the best mining equipment available. Granted, it was the only mining equipment available, but it was still pretty nice to have.

The mining crew hopped inside, Robinson taking up the rear. Twelve of them in total. Two to fly the shuttle, two to run the drill, and the rest to monitor the mineral levels, and keep everything running smoothly. All twelve of them wore space suits, breathing heavily into their helmets. It was boiling hot down on Mercury, and all that lay between them and a burning, melting death were these suits. Marshmallow sat at the controls, Jenkins at his side. Marshmallow was young, but skilled, and determined. If anyone could get them through this, it was him. Robinson closed the door behind him.

“Rightio, Marshmallow,” he said, his voice going through the microphone in his helmet, and into the earpieces of the other miners. “Let’s get this show on the road. We don’t have much cargo space, so we’ll need to take a couple trips.”

The shuttle ejected itself from the Vindicator’s cargo pod, and zipped down to the red planet below. After a few minutes, Marshmallow guided the vessel along, zipping towards the hotspots on his starmap. The Precursor ship had done scans of the planet before hand, identifying the minerals they were looking for. Now all Robinson’s men had to do was stop at these minerals, drill underground, and suck them into the ship in liquid form. It was a terribly complicated process, one that only Rigby fully understood. Nobody wanted Rigby to explain it to them, it gave them all headaches.

Rigby was the crew’s Xenotech. He and Leopold were the ones in charge of manning the drill. Twenty years old, and the first baby born on Unzervault, Robinson often wondered how this shmuck had gotten to be so smart. At the moment, Rigby had his eyes tightly shut, silently whispering for God to get him out of this.

“We’re here,” Marshmallow said, flicking open a switch that popped open the back door and stretched out the drill. “Its up to you now.”

Robinson and company piled out of the shuttle, their boots crunching against the searing ground. They wouldn’t need to worry about the low gravity here, these very same boots held a strong magnetic pull towards the surface. Another thing Rigby knew a lot about. Already, their cooling jets were buzzing away. He motioned for Leopold and Rigby to start drilling, while Rushmore and Hendryx checked the perimeter. The rest of them would ensure that the drill wasn’t going to cause any earthquakes. Everything was looking good. And in fact, everything WAS good. Soon, the minerals had been pulled into the drills storage compartment, and the shuttle was on its way again. Every so often, they would have to head back to the ship to drop the minerals off, before returning again, but it got easier to handle each time.

Finally, the team was on its last mineral. It was the same deal. Rigby and Leopold would man the drill, Rushmore and Hendryx would check the perimeter. Robinson smiled a smile of relief. He’d been worried something was going to go wrong! As the drill finished its work, he started back to the shuttle. Behind him, he could here Baxter yelling. Probably in joy.

“Oh God!” came Baxter’s scream, and Robinson could feel the hot air push behind him. It was unbearably bright, even through the helmet’s tinted visor. The ground began to crack underneath him. Hendryx grabbed him as he ran past, and led him to the shuttle.

“What’s going on?” the lieutenant yelled, barely able to hear anything over his cooling jets working in full motion. “Did we start an earthquake?”

“I only wish,” came Marshmallow’s voice through his ear piece. “Some sort of volcanic eruption under the ground. We’re all gonna be melted alive if we don’t get outta here!”

The shuttle seemed a mile away, though it was really only a few feet, as Robinson, Hendryx, and Rushmore sped closer and closer to it. The ground beneath their feet split open, steam gushing out. Rushmore was nearly blown in the air by one, falling flat on his face. Robinson and Hendryx could only watch as the ground around him collapsed, and he disappeared below. They hopped aboard the shuttle, their faces damp with sweat. Leopold was ensuring that the mining gear was locked in place. He gave the thumbs up. Marshmallow set the craft to full speed, gliding several dozen meters above the ground.

The craft shuddered violently as a burst of hot magma issued forth and splashed against the hull of the shuttle. Bits of the hull were seared right off, the metal glowing white. Marshmallow could barely see ahead of them. He couldn’t lift off. The damn thing wasn’t lifting!

The back door popped open, the drill popping out, and hanging precariously out the back. Leopold went with it, barely avoiding a plummet into the magma below, as he gripped the end of the drill with all his might. Robinson ran for him, reaching his hand out the back door. It wouldn’t work, he was too far away.

“Damnit Marshmallow,” he yelled. “Fly this thing, out into space! We’re about to get fried!”

“I can’t,” Marshmallow shouted back. “The damn thing is stalling on me. I’m trying my best here!”

 Robinson crawled out over the drill’s mechanisms, reaching out to Leopold, as he swung in the air wildly. Leopold tried to take his hand, but he was still too far away. The clock on his wrist, clearly blaring out the words FEBRUARY 19, 18:54, began to melt away. Robinson crawled out ever closer to him, desperately trying to save Leopold before he could fall, and be surely turned to ash by the ever nearing magma.

“Damn thing,” Marshmallow yelled, bashing the control panel. “Why won’t you WORK?” He pulled the control stick towards him, nearly snapping it off, Jenkins flicking switches and pulling levers beside him. Nothing seemed to be able to get this thing up in the air.

Robinson’s hand brushed up against Leopold’s. Almost there. Just one more inch, and he would pull him up and onto the shuttle. Leopold’s watch bubbled away, and he could feel the heat burning his arm, even with the meticulous work of the cooling jets. Robinson’s hand was in reach. He lifted his hand out to it.

There was a snap, and Leopold fell, a piece of the drill still in his hand. Another burst of magma, and he was gone. Robinson felt a pit grow in his stomach. He had been so close. Now, Leopold was gone. How many more would die this way?

Suddenly, the shuttle shot up into the air. Marshmallow was thrown back in his seat. Whatever had gone wrong, it was fine now. Later, they’d guess that something had clogged the engines, and melted away. For now, they just zipped up into the sky, landing gently in the Vindicator’s cargo bay.

On the way back to Earth the next day, there was a funeral service for Baxter, Rushmore, and Leopold. Nobody spoke a word.


***


   It took two days to get back to the starbase at Earth. If Zelnick only knew how long his journies would be after this day, he might not have been so impatient. The crew was still in bad spirits after the events on Mercury. Zelnick was hit the hardest. He had sent those men to the planet, knowing the danger. Most of these people were much older and wiser than he, what right did he have to put them in harm’s way?

   Erika was upset too. She had spent the last few hours circling round and round the starbase, trying to get close. It was nearly midnight of February 21 when they finally docked.

“Did you find any radioactive elements for our power cores?” came Hayes’ voice over the speakers.

“We are ready to transfer the radioactives, Commander,” Zelnick replied, his voice more sorrowful than business-like. “Stand by.”


               ***


“Power ratings are climbing, life support is coming back into the green,” DeYoung cried, his joy radiating through the central station of the Starbase. There were cheers from every man and woman in the station as the lights flickered back on. Hayes himself was positively glowing with relief. Thank God this ship had arrived when it did. He flicked on his view panel.

“Deep radar systems and sensors are now online, and I can scan your vessel,” Hayes exclaimed, his eyes darting to a separate screen on his panel. What he saw made him gasp. That thing was a lot bigger than it looked from in here. “What the hell kind of ship is that? Just who are you, Captain?” What came back was the most surprising thing he’d heard all day.

“I am Captain Zelnick, of the starship Vindicator,” the Captain replied. “We are the survivors of a Star Control science research team to Vela.”

“Star Control science mission, eh?” Hayes said, his confidence sinking fast. “Captain, I served as a Star Control Officer during the war, aboard several cruisers in the Coreward Front, and if there had been any scientific mission to Vela, I would’ve heard about it.” For all the Commander knew, these people could be Ilwrath trying to play with them before slaughtering everyone in the base. Not what he had been hoping for this morning.

“The mission was highly secret,” came the reply. At first, Hayes didn’t buy it. But he could sense the annoyed tone of Zelnick’s voice, and decided to play along.

“Hmmm, you know come to think of it Captain,” the Commander said slowly, there were some rumors that Corridor Nine, the special operations division of Star Control, was directing some hush-hush operation near Androsynth space.” Even as he said it, Hayes realized that the words came so easily because they were true. By god, these people were from Star Control! “The Vela Star System… yes, that would be in the right direction. So Captain, if you say it’s true, how do you explain that huge alien starship you’re flying. And why are you here?”

“We have returned to Earth to give you the technological secrets of the Precursors, and to help you fight the Hierarchy.”

For a long time, there was silence. Nobody quite believed what Zelnick had just said. Hayes composed himself and spoke again.

“Ahh, fight the Ur-Quan! Win back our freedom,” he said. “I remember having thoughts like those once, a long time ago. But that was in the first years after the defeat, when it was still terrifying to look up and see the bloody glow of the pulsating slave shield overhead. Through day and night we gazed up at the impenetrable wall, as though the sheer power of our hatred would pull it down. But over the years I spent so much time struggling, that I’d forgotten what it means to be free. To hate our Ur-Quan Masters. And now, here you are, in an alien ship of unknown power. Offering your assistance to fight the Ur-Quan again after all these years.”

   His little speech had an effect on his crew, and Hayes knew that if he turned them down he’d be space debris in seconds. He had no intention of doing no such thing. He longed to see a blue sky, and damned if he didn’t! But still, would it work?

“Captain, your offer is intriguing,” he continued. “It’s tempting to think that with your Precursor technology, we can somehow crack the slave shield, and reassemble the Alliance to attack the Hierarchy, and this time WIN the damn war!”

   The crew was ecstatic now, each and every one of them waiting for a chance to go on board the Precursor ship and feast on Ur-Quan blood. They wouldn’t be happy about what he had to say next.

“But, consider the consequences. The Ur-Quan won’t just punish us here on the station. They will exact a gruesome retribution on the surface below, as well. Before I commit this station to helping you attack the Ur-Quan, and accepting the risk of annihilation if we are defeated, I have to make sure you and your ship have what it takes to oppose the Hierarchy. I’ll make you a deal. If you can eliminate the alien base on the moon, and get rid of that threat at least, I will seriously consider your offer.”

Again, an uneasy silence. And then, the Vindicator undocked and droned in the direction of the moon. For the second time in the past ten minutes, every man and woman in the station cheered.


               ***


“I hope you all had a good night’s rest,” Robinson said on the morning of February 22. “Because this might be the last day of all our lives.” Behind him, the Earth’s moon leered at the crew with a menacing face. The men before them were geared up with the best armament that had left Vela. There was no joking around. There were probably a dozen Spathi Eluders and Ilwrath Avengers waiting on the surface.

“If we screw this up, everyone on the Vindicator will be crispy within the hour,” Robinson finished, climbing into the shuttle. It was still damaged from the ordeal on Mercury. The Captain had decided that sneaking in would be the best option, so they had hastily rigged up some explosives, in the hopes that they could blow the place sky-high. The chances were at one in a million. It was a damned suicide mission.

The shuttle stopped about a half mile away from the small base ahead. The team piled out, guns in hand, and began on foot. Hendryx, being the strongest, carried the explosives on his back. It was a job that made him nervous. They went through a small valley, getting closer to that base every second. Robinson took up the front, Marshmallow was in the rear.

“You hear that?” Rigby trembled. It wasn’t his imagination, Robinson heard it too. Something was above them. He motioned for them to press themselves against the valley wall. Hendryx unlatched the explosives, digging both him and it as far into the side of cliff as he could. Whatever was above them kicked up a spray of dust and rocks. The gravity slowed the fall, but it was enough for Rigby to panic. He clicked off the gravity plates in his boots, jumped up in the air, and fired wildly with his rifle. Several seconds later, he hit the ground on his back. Their assailant came after him, nearly trapping him underneath. It was a spy drone of some sort, with a large plow on the front.

“Great,” Marshmallow sighed. “Now they know we’re here.”

But as the team got to the base, they found nobody. Even once inside, it became clear there were no Ilwrath or Spathi to deal with. The power was running, all systems were clear, and the place was totally abandoned. Rigby set to work on the HyperWave Broadcast system. After an hour or two, he decided it was a mayday signal. Everybody who had once been on the moon was dead, leaving a collection of construction robots behind.

“How anti-climactic,” Marshmallow said, but he and everyone else was glad there would be no dying today.

By that afternoon, the Vindicator was already back at the Starbase.

“Have you dealt with the base yet?” Hayes asked.

“We found the base, but it was abandoned years ago,” Zelnick replied. He was as relieved as anyone that he hadn’t sent anyone to their death.

“I’ll be darned,” the Commander replied. “All these years we’ve been listening to their incoherent broadcasts and we never guessed.”

               ***

DeYoung grabbed Hayes’ shoulder, his face stark with fear.

“An Ilwrathi avenger! It just jammed our signal!”

The Vindicator had failed already.

“By the fetid breath of the Dark God, Kazon,” Captain Ishkavvelkasha exclaimed. “A Hu-Man in an alien starship. How fascinating. When I intercepted that Ur-Quan drone, and learned that an unidentified starship had approached Earth, I never expected to find such a remarkable vessel in the hands of a Hu-Man.”

Zelnick wiped a brow seeing this vicious looking creature, but Sparks barely flinched. He just looked on with a hatred even more vicious than the Ilwrath. The beast, resembling a spider from Earth, except red, and bigger, and with claws and sharp killer mandibles, looked back with several unblinking eyes.

“Hu-Mans are prey animals,” Ishkavvelkasha replied, hunger dripping from each word. “Weak and helpless. But here is a Hu-man in an armed starship! And therefore in direct violation of the Oath of Fealty! I am sure our masters, the Ur-Quan, will punish Earth most severely for this treachery, when I present them with the wreckage of your corpse, and your many charred corpses!”

The Captain stood up to begin his negotiations, but it was Sparks who spoke first.

“It will be a pleasure blasting your ugly face out of the stars,” he grunted, before zipping off communications.

The Avenger sped towards the Vindicator, a burst of flame shooting out from the tip of its beak.

“You idiot!” Zelnick cried, causing every head on the bridge to turn and look. “That thing is going to burn us all alive.”

“Relax, Zelnick,” Sparks replied, not standing up. “This will be a cakewalk.”

“A cakewalk! You’ve made a big mistake here, Sparks,” the Captain argued. “We’ll be skinned alive!”

“Don’t be such a goddamn coward,” Sparks growled, giving Zelnick a critical eye. “You need to learn when to run and when to fight. And right now, is the time to fight.”

“People are going to die because of you,” Zelnick sighed, slumping into his chair.
               ***

Robinson and Marshmallow were in the cargo bay when they saw the Avenger. Fear gripped both their hearts. By the time that thing got in range of the Vindicator, it would already be cooking them up.

“I sure hope the Ilwrath don’t like their Marshmallow raw,” Marshmallow said weekly.

               ***


So much for the Vindicator. Hayes and DeYoung could only look on as the Avenger swooped down on the alien vessel, like a hawk swoops down upon a fish. They’d have a good view of the crew members burning alive from this angle. Shortly before the Ilwrath decided to take the starbase’s residents alive. Damn those Vela scientists.


               ***

“Now, Margot! Fire!” Leonard yelled.

                    ***
Erika shut her eyes as the Ilwrath Avenger came ever closer to the ship. This was the end. They were all going to die. So much for fighting the Hierarchy. Her eyes opened to the sight of the ship spiraling off course, a second missile zooming in and smashing into its side, a brilliant cloud of flame and dust coursing through the nothingness. The Tobermoon. They’d forgotten about the Tobermoon. Everyone except for Sparks.

That day, the crew finally got a break. The Vindicator and the Tobermoon docked with the starbase.

               ***

“What a beautiful sight, Captain,” Hayes exclaimed as Zelnick and Sparks stepped through the airlock. “I haven’t seen an Avenger blown away like that since the Battle of Draco.”

“I can take partial credit for this one,” Sparks replied, a boastful smile on his lips. “Though, Officer Leonard Rekk is the captain of the Tobermoon.”

“I guess you know how to handle yourself in battle,” Hayes went on. “So my last reservation about helping you is resolved. I will commit this station to helping free Earth and defeat the Ur-Quan. We may get our atoms rearranged in the process, but by God, Captain, we’re going to try.”

They walked through the large steel doors into the central station. DeYoung was waiting excitedly.

“So, the obvious first step is to get your Precursor equipment and software over here,” he said, without greeting. “So that we can make it work with our ship repair fabricators.”

“Agreed,” Zelnick said. “We’ll need to ensure that the Vindicator is fit as a fiddle, as they say.”

“But then what, Captain?” Hayes asked.

“We will slowly build our strength,” came Zelnick’s reply. “Unify an allied star fleet, and bring the Ur-Quan to their knee-equivalents.”

“A sensible plan, Captain,” said Hayes. “Let’s get to work.”


                  ***

For two weeks, the first members of the New Alliance of Free Stars worked to prepare the starship Vindicator. There was a crew turn around, and many of the officers on the Vindicator went to the starbase. The same was true in reverse. On the final day before the Vindicator’s departure, Robinson and company decided to break in the ship’s new canteen. There had been many modifications to the inside of the ship to make it more livable for people of Human size. With the advent of this, the ship had quite a few more floors than previous. As such, it also had quite a few more spaces in the Living Area for things like the canteen, and a gym.

Robinson, Marshmallow, Hendryx, and Traveller were seated next to one of several windows in the room, overlooking the slave-shielded Earth. Traveller, who’s real name was Carl Frakes, was from the starbase, a cocky fellow who DeYoung had personally insisted come on board. More because DeYoung needed him out of his hair than anything else.

“You know,” Robinson said, a glass of warm beer in his hand. “When I was a kid, I used to dream about going out into the stars. I used to say to my friends ‘When I grow up, I wanna get off this boring planet and go off into space!’ Now that I’m out here, and they’re all down there, it gets me thinking. Maybe the Earth isn’t so bad. Sure, it’s got its problems, but after seeing the rest of the galaxy, I truly think it’s the jewel of the universe. Now, after wanting all my life to get off of it, my greatest fear is that I’ll never live to go back on it again. Kind of ironic isn’t it?”

For a moment, everybody just looked out at Earth, the moon spiraling around it. Marshmallow raised his glass.

“To Earth,” he said. The others raised their glasses and drank to the Earth, beginning to think it might all be ok after all.


               ***

The Vindicator pulled in its docking compartment, drifting casually out towards the stars. Zelnick seated himself next to Sparks, his eyes fixated on the space out ahead of them. The first officer gave him a long look.

“You ready to go out into space, Captain?” he asked, setting his cane aside. Zelnick gave a slight nod, never looking away from the view screen. It was time to live out the stories he’d heard as a kid.

“Let’s go Erika,” the Captain ordered, and the Vindicator sped away, the Tobermoon right behind it, leaving Earth and the Starbase behind.


---

Feedback, comments, suggestions for the future are more than welcome! Hope you all enjoyed the first installment!

A few things that I would change:

I find the prolog kind of bland and reword it.

When Zelnick says they have the most powerfull ship around I would change it to be less arrogant, because they know whatever happened to earth was most likely caused by ur-quan and if earth has fallen that speaks badly for the rest of the alliance. Also the vindicator does not have enough fuel to return to vela or to reach the other alliances home worlds. Also the vindicator at the start of the game is rather pathetic and could be easily killed by a fleet if there was one stationed in sol. I would have them discuss the fuel issue because the fuel means they are dependent on aid from earth or wreckage around earth to get fuel.   I know the melnorme are out there but they don’t.

I would also add a little about sparks trying to get the drone destroyed. And later when hayes realizes its gone sparks can say “we tried to kill it but the thing was just to damn fast.”

On mercury you kept saying lifting off into the air and such I would reword it to say “get off the ground” or lift off. Since mercurly has no atmosphere.

Docking with the star base doesn’t make much sense when it comes to the dialog. When the ship is docked Hayes would be able to look at the ship and his reaction to the ship would happen then not when his scanners came back. Also docking with a station leaves the ship vulnerable to a boarding action. In case it was a trap as sparks says. Instead I would have had the lander transport the radioactive to the station.

The lander crew on mercury they had magnetic boots on the moon they had gravity boots. It’s an inconsistency. I like the gravity better then magnetic.

I think the battle with the dillrat needs a little more substance.

Also after the battle with the dillrat you say they dock with the station again I would think the dialog is better suited to a ship to ship communication.


I like it so far. It’s enjoyable.

And why doesn't the Ilwrath speak all words in capitals? It would look more like an Ilwrath then.
Also, I would make the Pkunk Fury in the prologue resurrect and leave the fight because its fighting frenzy ended and he just realized how much he loved those Ilwraths.

Also, the excerpt from the "Personalized Autobiography" of Farnsworth could be enriched with a few descriptions equivalent of the slides from the game that correspond to the words.
I mean, make the "camera" zoom in slowly to the action/subject.

The personalized autobiography thing is just the game's intro text. I didn't want to mess around with it too much. It's a first draft anyway, if I find a way to spruce it up, I will.

I decided to save ressurecting Furies for considerably later on. The Ilwrath have destroyed 2/3rds of their race. If they all resurrect and run away, that is unbelievable. There will be plenty of Pkunk jokes in later chapters.

You would be more pissed off if I wrote the Ilwrath's speech in all capitals. Trust me, it doesn't look good. It works in the game because the letters that are really supposed to be capitilized are considerably larger.

The boots thing is totally my mistake. There was a few weeks where I didn't write between Mercury and the Moon. I thought I had done gravity earlier. I'll change this in the next draft.

I was worried about Hayes' reaction to the ship, as well. I always figured he'd just look through the window and see that it's an alien ship. I like the idea of sending the lander to the station instead of docking. It gives me a chance for another Sparks-style suspicion.

The air on mercury thing is more like literary license. Like how there's also no sound in space. Of course, I plan to spruce up all the scenes a bit, and Mercury was one of the places where I didn't like my variety of language anyway. I'll take the "get off the ground" bit into consideration.

The battle with the Avenger will be looked at, too. I don't like the way it just kinda teetered off and exploded after all the people were worried they'd all die.

"We’ll get it back to normal soon, Sparks,” Zelnick said cheerily. “After all, we have the strongest ship in the galaxy, right?"

Is that the scene where Zelnick seems arrogant? It's what I was going for, Zelnick is young and naive. Sparks quickly corrects him. If it's another one that I just don't remember, point it out to me, and I'll check on it.

For the Second Draft, which may come before or after Chapter 2, I might work on them simultaneously depending on how focused I can stay on the Draft, I have several plans:

-The moon base scene needs to be longer and more interesting. I want this to be a tense moment for the crew, especially after the incident on Mercury. I did badly on this cause the moon is probably my least favorite segment, and I never really thought too much into it. So unlike other segments, I didn't have any ideas going in. It should be quite a bit better the next time around.

-In the battle with the Ilwrath, I want the ending to be more a bit more dramatic. After that scene with everybody saying "Oh god, we're all screwed" it seems anticlimactic. Especially since it's the end of the chapter.

-The Pkunk vs. Ilwrath battle will be fixed up. For obvious reasons. >.>

-I want Leonard from the Tobermoon to be mentioned somewhere else. I realized only after that last fight that I hadn't actually mentioned him yet. He ends up seeming more Deus Ex Machina than anything else that way. D:

-There are several areas that seem rushed. I'll look over these, too.

Chapter 2 will probably start just after the Vindicator has mined the Solar System (I'm not writing about every single mining trip. It would get boring fast), and is heading for Pluto. It will likely continue with a meeting with the Pkunk, the distress signal from Rigel leading to the Zoq-Fot-Pik, and ending with the Vindicator returning to Vela now that they seem to have supporters and resources.

Actually, I tried an all-cap Ilwrath text and it looks very well.
Plus, you could use fonts from the game for aliens. Why not?

Ilwrath Talk Like This, Puny Hu-Man.

THE WAY THAT THE CHMMR SPEAK CAN MORE ACCURATELY BE CALLED "ALL CAPS".

Yer right, dear human.
Forgive us if we forget the importance you attach to such things like this.

The all caps thing is merely a method of conveying their way of speaking. However, the author here has the option, and the right, to use other methods of Conveyance. Two examples are as follows:

 When the Chmmr spoke, it was slightly louder than necessary and paused slightly between words.

 or

 The Illwrath in all its grotesque glory spoke. It's speech was a great deal louder than necessary and it was overly pleased with itself.

 Lame, I know, but what do ou expect with no notice?

That’s the one. If zelnick is meant to be naive and young then I would make sparks reply a little better. Something like: “Don’t forget this ship is only an incomplete skeleton and we have only one.”

Don't fight now, the last thing I want is for this thread to turn into a flame match. There is no such thing as a stupid comment in this thread unless it really has nothing to do with Star Control.

I like Konthra's idea. Different fonts and ALL CAPS works well in a game, but in a literary piece, it rarely works out well. Usually CAPS are used to convey things on signs or on computer screens. Besides, if a person runs through the whole game without sound on their first time, they might imagine something completely differently, regardless of the Ilwrath font.

I can certainly work in some sort of description of how an Ilwrath speaks. It will be in the second draft.

I'll also work on Spark's reply. Much work to do now. Keep the great comments and suggestions coming. :D

Hey Grak! Do you outline? And if so, how strict are you in following it?

I outline sometimes, but I use it as a general guide, not as a rule. Mostly it helps when you don't know where to turn next. When you go through the writing process, you get better ideas anyway. Outlines work for some people, and not others. Most cases of writer's block come from people without outlines. Then again, several famous authors refuse to use outlines. It depends on your opinion, really.

For SC2, my outline is the game. If I ignore it, people are gonna be mad and wonder why there was no Yehat Revolt. >.>

Still... what's Zelnick's first name is going to be? :) I'd vote for Jiri (Czech name - the last name sounds very Western-Slavic).

What about Robert Zelnick (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Zelnick&btnG=Google+Search)?

Or no first name at all.

That's funny! I was gonna say Roger. Robert works, too! Heh heh. Hmmm....maybe this should be a Poll?

Bob for short.

Or maybe "Strauss" (http://www.zelnickmedia.com/zelnick.html)?

This is just a single joke. "Robert"-"Bob" is a double joke (Robert Zelnick, the one that gets the most entries on Google when you search "Zelnick", and "Bob" from "Toys for Bob"). Also, there's that Umgah, Bob.
It would be interesting to have him one of the Umgah captains in the fleet... ""This is your captain speaking!" - Bob to the Vindicator crew.

This is a brilliant idea.  I read through all the suggestions but not the drafts, yet.

It has so much potential for telling the psychological aspect of the adventure.  I haven't heard yet how the Captain selects which particular pilots to engage in a melee.  Not just the tactical aspect of what ship, but for instance if you have 3-4 Cruisers, which one do you send out first?

An Orz marine raid into an enemy ship would be interesting. . .

I think a big theme should be learning how to recover from your mistakes while always facing ambiguous choices.  I love the comment about missing the quasi-space wormhole and having to camp out for 2 weeks while fending off Slylandro probes (it sort of happened to me).  So you should recreate some of the mistakes that noobs routinely make, because we all can relate.

Can't wait!

True, but it preserves the in-joke instead of changing it to another one.

Grak decides.

Well, I've generally been avoiding his first name so far. It's not really important to me, but if you guys feel like it could be an important part of the story, you can have a poll on it, or something. Just don't take the ethnicity of the name Zelnick into consideration when deciding on it. After all, 200 years in the future, there will be all sorts of people with Ukranian last names, many of which probably won't be aware of a Ukranian connection. Still, any name goes, I'm sure people on Unzervault get named all sorts of things. :P

In chapter 2 I want to have more on the character's offtime. Suggestions for recreational activies of the 23rd centure would be muchly appreciated. :O

In a space warship I doubt there is enough free room to have things like baseball fields (even on the vindicator) and such. So I bet they will have to be creative for R&R. One thing I would check into is what servicemen in navy vessels do for R&R.  Or even what the crew of things like a B-17 did back in WW2 during missions while they were not over enemy airspace.

They would play MELEE! :D
Something like, "during the Hierarchy War events, someone named Paul Reiche XVII developed a funny simulation game where the players could pick any ship from Alliance and Hierarchy and engage in a battle against their fellow players or computer" :)
A rather comical scene came in mind, where the Awesome AI from Melee accidentally takes control of the Vindicator for a while... :)

Actually, if you look at the crew module you can see what appears to be a hydropinics bay, aka a garden. This hints at some extra space. Also! When the storage bays aren't in use, the crew chould use those to play games in. Finally, I imagn in the future the computers are good enough to play some pretty awesome games.

 There, I'm done.

That sounds like it would be essential equipment for survival while spending a month or more just travelling through Hyperspace, not so much an extra space issue.

For some reason, I get the feeling that, at least initially, the crew (at least the ones from Unzervalt) would be avid readers, especially of historical chronicles of the last year of the war and events that followed. Of course, I can also imagine games of "corridor football" in the crew quarters (like in the dorm hallways in college).

I'd imagine the crew from the starbase are all seriously bored and restless and want to vent their energy.  Rough and tumble games like corridor football sound well-suited.  I'd also imagine a lot of pranks taking place, especially when new races join the crew (Fwiffo, Pkunk would be ideal candidates).  Who knows how disciplined these people are after spending years on a starbase or under the red Earth sky?  This is their first chance for some action and discipline might not be a priority.

Also, what's the policy on the Earth crew's re-population effort?  Is it encouraged?  Regulated?  Discouraged while on the ship?

Their past experience might also make them extremely cunning, manipulative, even ruthless.  I could see some with their own motives besides saving the galaxy -- a spy for the Hierarchy, a guy with a deal with the VUX to deliver the Captain to Zex, etc.  These people would influence how the Captain outfits the Vindicator, perhaps.  And I'm sure the crew who performs the module installations get weary of the Captain who continues to change his mind throughout the game.  Before the RU cost increases for the crew, I could see a temporary strike taking place.

I see the seeds for the Black Spathi Squadron rumor, especially if Zelnick retains Fwiffo and a handful of other Eluders. . .  ;)  Maybe the black and red paint camouflages or conceals their appearance (to look like harmless probes or something) when they invade slave-shielded worlds. 

Also:  Just read the first draft.  Very nice pace and set-up.  I had some pre-conceived ideas about how the mining operations took place so I was a little confused about your description.  I never read any of the manuals so I thought everything took place while inside the lander.  It does make sense that some people would die while others didn't if they actually got out of the lander.  How does the drill operate?  I don't think a totally new reader would have a problem, though.

I think you need to watch out for modern-day vernacular that people might not use in the future.  Do they know what a Swiss army knife is and do they use it in the future?  What do they eat?  Who knows what marshmallows are?  And there were some grammar errors, such as "whose" vs. "who's", but those are very minor and will be corrected later.

Re: the Pkunk battle.  I have only played the UQM port so I don't know what other insults the Pkunk guys said during battle.  Do they say all those things?  I thought it was just:  Jerk.  Moron.  Stupid.  Dodo.   :D  I'm not sure what their place is in the very beginning of the story, either.  Did I miss something?

Great work!

Twit wimp baby loser idiot dummy!

Hahahaha.  Exactly!   ;D

I'd assume we'd still have marshmallows 200 years in the future. We've kept plenty of other screwed up foods around for a lot longer than marshmallows. :P

I wasn't going for accuracy with the insults. The Pkunk engines are powered by their aggression, not by magic words. Hence, I didn't put as much effort into finding exact insults for them. I think even the Pkunk would lose faith in themselves if they ran out of things to say.  ;D

 The begginning sequence with the Pkunk and the Ilwrath is the scene in which the Ilwrath Avenger, which the Vindicator confronts at the station, is damaged. I felt that rather than have the Ilwrath whine about it in a 3 sentence monologue, I'd introduce it as the first scene. It needs a lot of work though.

I've been thinking over some extra-sciency designs for the mining drill. Some ideas that have crossed my mind during brainstorming are:

-The drill somehow superheats the metal into a liquid and puts it in barrels (I don't like this, it's too far out)

-The drill grinds up the metals into smaller pieces, carrying these smaller pieces up a funnel on the side of the drill-arm, and stored in containers. This probably wouldn't work in real life, but neither do most other things in science fiction.

-The drill drills AROUND bits of useful metals and lugs them into the back of the lander. It's inefficient, and the lander would need to be a bit tougher, but it could be done. Granted, it would take all day.

In a universe were the manipulation of gravity is possible a lot of strange things could be done with weird science.
Here is one possible idea:
Gravity is an attractive force as far as we know gravity effects everything equally, but what if you can make it so it doesn’t? If you could then you could make a device that could literally pull ore out of the ground.

 Here is how I would envision it working:
The crew detects a large vein of ore and land on the ground above it. If the vein is very deep they can call on the mother ship to make a “mine shaft.”  They pull out the “drill” (it would probably have a different name) and tune it to the material they want. Then they deposit it above the ore and lift off, taking the lander to a safe distance, then activate it. The drill starts pulling on the ore like how a magnet pulls on the iron particle in a sandbox and as the drill spins up the ore will start to fly towards the drill. The drill will automatically adjust the power settings so as the ore builds up it will crank up the power. The reason for the slow start is when a certain amount of ore surrounds the drill it will act as armor to protect the drill from any dangerous high velocity ore fragments. After the drill detects that enough ore is surrounding it, it will crank up the power so that any impurities will be forced out like air that is underwater. Once the drill is done the crew will find a sphere of the pure material with a crust of other stuff, and the drill at the core.

After the crew will have to cut up the sphere to extract the drill and to get the material in small enough pieces to be stored aboard the lander.

That's a good idea. After all, if they can't manipulate gravity, how can they create a suitable gravity inside space ships?

Centrifugal effect?

At the StarBase, maybe. Maybe on the Vindicator too. But what about, say, Fwiffo's StarRunner?

Artificial gravity well.

Exactly.

Magnets? Constant thrust? Plenty of solutions that don't involve gravity generator (which may or may not be possible).

Magnets?! So the Ur-Quan hanging on the ceiling have iron boots or what?! Not to mention the Umgah...
Plus, prolonged weightlessness has negative effects on the (human) body.

Constant thrust? And when they stop - BOOM! Plus, some ships are too slow.

I thought the Ur-Quan was hanging off the ceiling the way a spider might hang off it's web. >.> And the Umgah look sticky.

I'm not much good at engineering and physics whatnot, but a gravity generator and a magnet are both pretty similar things, aren't they? I mean, the Earth is pretty much just a big magnet that makes us all stick nice and close. I'm pretty sure if you could somehow simulate that affect, you'd get something equal to that kind of weight. Just having everyone wear magnetic boots at all times is incredibly inconvenient. If someone can explain how gravity actually works, that will bring us one step closer to answering this.

It will also win him/her a Nobel prize.

Well, there are theories.. Most popular are the general relativity theory (Einstein's) model, the quantum mechanic model and the string theory model. Einstein says gravity is caused by mass by curving the space and time, causing a gravity well. According to Quantum mechanics, everything with mass emits (virtual) particles called gravitons, which pull the objects they travel through towards whatever emitted it. And string theory.. Well, I really don't know enough about it to tell anything.
Wikipedia has a quite lenghty article about general relativity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/general_theory_of_relativity

Anyway, how would gravitons work? And how would the way they work work? And so on... you can't find the First Cause of anything, you have to stop somewhere.

As to Star Control... maybe Ur-Quans and Umgahs etc. are sticky/etc., but what about the Druuge, the Utwig, the Supox, the Orz *fingers*, the Pkunk, the Yehat, the Thraddash etc. etc. Not to mention that incense-like gas in the Utwig captain portrait.
Also, as I've said, prolonged weightlessness has a negative impact on the skeleton and the muscles. So they surely can manipulate gravity to a very little extent (except the Chmmr with their tractor beams and the Arilou with inertia dampeners).

The cool thing about sci-fi, is that you don't HAVE to explain exerything. Why worry about? Call it "Artificial Gravity" and drive on. Need to bend things a little? Also easy, you can explain to the reader that the <something> is based on the same princple as the artificial gravity. Am I making any sense here? Unless have a doctorate in physics or mathematics,  I really wouldn't worry about it. This is, after all, about the story: what happens behind the scenes, not the tech behind it all. If you want to know about THAT, I'd cotact the originators an get their thoughts before continuing the topic.

Detailed sci-fi, which explains things in detail (although not necessarily in a scientific way) is nicer.

As to what explanation to use, I think everyone agrees that it'd be nice to use BioSlayer's one.

True, and  I agree. BioSlayer seems to have the easiest, and most plausable, description. The mining is one thing, but trying to explain the artificial gravity is another. There you get into the reals of Hard Sci-Fi, which this work is not.

I just had a thought to make the system seem closer to what you see in the game:

The drills could be launched from the mother ship and remotely activated. So what happens is after the mother ship scans the planet and decides to mine it. It will launch the drills and they will all activate simultaneously above their targets. By the time the lander is prepped and crewed and landed the drills would have already finished their work. So all the lander would do is go around chopping up the spheres of materials and load them aboard the lander.  This makes it closer to the game since all the minerals are represented by Spheres.

This could also explain why a lot of the wild life attacks the lander crew. They are angry because the planet just got a few good chucks ripped out of it and in the process a few friends of theirs got hurt.

Nope. The wildlife attacks the lander since... well... they're ferocious predators. Or they're really scared.

Also, the drills would be attacked too.
Not to mention that they won't land exactly on top of their target and will have to walk 'till there.

WHy couldn't the drills hit square on? If we can place a 95lb artillery shell down to the meter today, then in the future we should be able to put automated mining devices on target as well.

 Anyway, I like the idea for drills, but I have an idea of my own. Either the ship or the lander come equiped with a device similiar to the Chmmr's tractor device. Basically, it reaches into the earth and grabs the minerals, bringing them to the surface. I think this idea was already brouoght up to some degree, but it needs mentioning again.

 Thanks!

You can't target with the lander (the explanation is that it's because the lander is of Precursor design) so this would be the same with the drills too - especially since they'd be Precursor too.

As for the tractor device - from the ship it's too far, from the lander it's basically the first BioSlayer explanation, only not that fancy.

The lander misses because it is piloted by an Earthling.

Nay, it should have automated landing... also, the Flagship doesn't have such problems.
The lander misses because it's built by Earthlings - it's not copied well enough.

So if you were to use those drills, you would only have a limited supply of such.
Then, what if you lose them in earthquakes or hotspots?!

Wait, the precursor vessel doesn't have that problem? Yes it does, it misses constantly until it's heavily modified with human technology.

Actually -- just to pick nits -- the particular piece of tech that makes the Precursor vessel's weapon systems actually hit stuff is not human, it's Melnorme. And given the nature of the Melnorme, it's possible that they didn't invent it themselves, but either bought it from someone (the Keel-Verezy are implied to know a thing or two about weapons technology), or found it lying around somewhere. It's possible that the targeting system is itself a Precursor invention, discovered or bought by the Melnorme.

So Grakelin is still working on this?

I'm a terrible procrastinator. And my proffessional writing takes precedence over this, I'm afraid. >.> I'll be writing something else this weekend, but not week I'll probably do a second chapter. Or edit the first one. Depending on what people say between now, and... Wednesday.

I didn't mean to be a bother, I was just wondering.

Dear Grakelin, 

I have just come to find your work here. I don't know if you're still working this, but if you are
I have some comments on Chapter 1 ...

1) You do the characterization very well.   The human characters are believable, and the
dialog looks good. Far better than I could do.   

2) I admire your strict adherence to the story and your refusal to 'sex it up' with
your own inventions, a plague that haunts hollywood screenwriters no end. 


Now the two constructive criticisms:

1)  I would cut the prologue of the Ilwrath-Pkunk battle.  The reason being that we,
the players, don't know who the Pkunk are at the beginning of the game. They are
unknown.   I would prefer to gradually introduce them and reveal details bit-by-bit rather
than simply put it all out there at once.    It would give more a feel of discovery for the
reader if we gradually reveal their capabilities and motives, rather than give too much
detail at the very start. 

2)  As I said, you've done the human characters well, but it doesn't read very ... I dunno,
very SF-like.  It reads more game-y.  That may be your intention.  But the space scenes could
be done better. 

Example: Some cuts from your description of the Ilwrath-Pkunk battle. 



"Setting ships ablaze?" 

Fire doesn't burn in space. No oxygen. Unless the ship is venting atmosphere, and taht could
catch fire. The Ilwrath weapon (IIRC) is actually a superheated plasma stream. Sort of like
being hit by the sun.  A ship exposed to that would melt or warp but would not burn. 

"Machine gun fire"?   That kinds makes it sound like WWII , not space. 

I *was* going to post an example from contemporary SF, but most are several paragraphs and would make this post too long. Instead, I will point you to some authors and books worth reading:

Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle: "Mote in God's Eye" , "The Gripping Hand"
Roger Macbride Allen, "The Torch of Honor"
The Fleet anthology, edited by David Drake.
Honor Harrington series, by Weber. 

Maybe I'm just being picky, but I would want to give it a slightly 'harder' SF feel.  These folks would be a start. 

Or another example -- when the characters are approaching Sol ...



Uhmmm ... you'd have to be really, REALLY close to a planet to see it's color. Space is immense.  Most of the time one would be looking at computer displays. Visual contact where one could see with the naked eye what the planet looked like would have to wait until the vessel was at least closer than the orbit of Mars. 

Here's a short paragraph from Mote in God's eye, by contrast. A survey team is examining an unknown system...

"Until we located the gas giant and the Trojan asteroids we weren't precise about the plane of the system.  From the probe's instruments we have deduced the temperature the [aliens] find comfortable, and from that we deduce how far from the sun their planet should be ... and we still must search out a toroid a hundred and twenty million kilometers in radius.  Do you follow me? "

...

"We're going to have to search that entire region. We know the planet isn't hidden behind the sun because we're above
the plane of the system. But when we finish photographing the system we have to examine this enormous star field for the one dot of light we want". 

==============

The broad point I'm trying to make is that you've made a great start, but a little work on the SF "feel" would improve the atmosphere, make it seem a bit less like a game, make it just a touch better.

In any case, an excellent start, and I wish you well in completing this project. 

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Regarding artificial gravity , I can think of three ways to attack it:

1) artificial gravity is an artifact of hyperspace technology. Hyperdrive 'bends' space
to allow the ship to exit Truespace and enter hyper.   

If you can bend space to allow hyperdrive, you can also bend space to provide gravity. Gravity, after all, is simply an artifact of the phenomenon that mass distorts the space around it. 

This also allows us to explain how we can achieve incredibly high accelerations
without turning the crew into good ... the same space folding that allows entrance
to hyperspace and provides artificial gravity can also be used to ameliorate the
effects of inertia.  The arilou have perfected the technique with inertialess drives,  but more primitive versions are used by the other spacefaring races, allowing the
Spathi, for example, to perform operations that are beyond the normal capabilities
of an organic body. 

2) Natural gravity.  When not under thrust, docking, or in battle, the VINDICATOR spins on it's long axis, so that  "down" is towards
the middle of the ship.   When accelerating or in battle, "down" is towards the back
of the ship, since the force vector is towards the stern.   

3) What artificial gravity?
I don't recall any dialog in the game that requires there to be artificial gravity aboard the Vindicator or it's escorts.  There is gravity aboard the starbase, but that could easily
be provided by spinning the base. 

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Regarding way 1, I have to say that Star Control's HyperSpace, TrueSpace and QuasiSpace are three different dimensions (as in "planes of existence" or "universes"); they share the exact same space, but have different "reality phases" (which keep objects from different dimensions from interfering) and different laws.
So just folding space would not allow you to translate into HyperSpace.

As to how we can achieve such high accelerations - what about dumping that into the "game mechanics" category - that is, we could say that they aren't how things are actually done within the SC universe, they're just simplifications for the sake of gameplay, so in his story, Grakelin could use lower accelerations and speeds.

(Also, I'm not sure that making the Avengers so big would be realistic - the Ilwrath are a bunch of uplifted religious fanatics with rather primitive technology, and the Avenger only has a single frontal flamethrower, thus rendering the rest of the ship completely defenseless)

And as to the machine gun objection - the Pkunk Furies have a tri-directional minigun with superheated metal pellets. That's the canon. See here (http://uqm.stack.nl/wiki/Fury#Primary).

Hey, heres an idea. :)
One of the characters in the story should be a guy who eagerly joined the Vindicator crew and was shortly afterward transfered to an Orz ship. During an ambush by Hierarchy forces [or some other dramatic event] the ship gets separated from the main fleet.

It runs out of fuel, and the poor fellow finds himself stranded in deep space with nothing but Orz for company, and he can't figure out what the hell any of the *fingers* are actually saying.

He can't stand it when  the Orz tell him not to be so *frumple*. He eventually goes insane, and yells at every other member of the ship's crew until he decides that the ship should be blown up. Unknown to the Orz , he finds a way to overload the ship's systems, deactivating everything, including life support. He escapes in an Orz combat suit, but finds out, to his horror, that three of the marines survived. The Orz quickly realize he was responsible and, while screaming *NNNNNNNNGH* in rage, they gun him down with their weaponry.

The flagship arrives at the site a day later [they were searching for the lost Nemesis] and pick up the derelict ship and the remaining Orz, who tell Zelnick what happened. The captain objects to the *dancing*, *dissolving*, and the *sauce*  *enjoyment* that followed [the Orz say that this was the best part], but the Orz threaten to *squeeze the juice*, so he leaves them alone. He sends several subordinates to try and learn more about the incident, but this proves to be as useless as asking the Orz about the Androsynth.

Sorry it took awhile to get back to tthis. 

Reading the wiki,... I'm going to be an idiot ans ask, how canon is it? 

My point is, that 'machine gun' doesn't sound very SF, even if that is the *effect*.  The specific phrase used is

"triple mounted minigun"

"Machine gun" is one possible synonym, but not the only one. 

"Mass drivers in a rotary configuration" might be another.  "Recoilless gatling" yet another.  "Rapid-fire gauss accelerator" might be yet another. 

After all, we only know that it's a rapid-fire slug thrower.  That doesn't necessarily mean it throws lead objects powered by chemical explosive.  It could also be electromagnetic acceleration. And so on. 

Respectfully,

Brian P.

From the Star Control II DOS manual (page 93):
The Fury’s main (and only) weapon is a rapidfire,
very short-range mini-gun that launches streams of dense, superheated
metals forward and to the sides.

The goal is for it to be entirely canon, but in practice, it is not free of fan fiction and wild speculation. You're welcome to improve it though.

I know, this post is old, and I have no idea if you're still working on this, but in case you are, or are considering getting started on it again, here are my impressions.

This is a very good start.  I'm an aspiring writer, so I know how difficult it is to write :)  Very good dialogue, very cool, unique characters.  And actually, when the First Officer reprimands Zelnick for being cocky, I think that the way you phrased it fit his attitude towards the Captain perfectly, at least, based off of my impression of your description.  He's going to be a little caustic because he's an old guy with athritis who spent most of his life just waiting for the Ur-Quan to show up and eradicate Earth, not to mention that he is bitter about an upstard teenager being given command of humanity's only hope.

Some things to keep in mind:

1.  In real life, combat would not be one on one.  *Every* ship would be involved at the same time on both sides (with the possible exception of the Flagship if you decide to give it an arkship configuration).  Now, I think that parts of the Ilwrath Avenger battle work well to explain a one to one thing, since the crew of the Vindicator are panicking so they don't think to fight, while the Tobermoon saves the day, but I pray to whatever holy deity the crew believes in that things don't stay that way.

2.  Also, like an earlier post mentioned space is a big place, that goes for combat too.  Definitely read the Honor Harrington novels by David Weber if you want an example of that.  Even the close range weapons may travel several hundred kilometers, so you probably wouldn't have ships colliding.  For example, in the first Honor Harrington book, David Weber discusses a special device that can eradicate an opponent's shields, however, with a range of a hundred thousand kilometers, it is far too short range to be much use.

Now, in David Weber's novels, the ships have got some freaking advanced weapon systems, so maybe the range doesn't have to be that extreme, but your ships certainly shouldn't be getting close enough to collide.  Including this whole tremendous distance thing in space would work great to get rid of the "gamy feel."

3.  I imagine that on a space ship navigation would consist of inputing vectors and junk into a computer and then having the computer follow that course.  So your inexperienced pilot wouldn't circle around the Starbase for hours trying to dock.  However, you could have her be frustrated because she had to correct her vectors several times during the journey because she kept catching mistakes, and you could even have the captain catch one of her mistakes, which would make her rather embarassed, and the First Mate grumpy.

Good luck in all your writing endeavors.

I'll give my short insert in here.

If you are able to recreate the atmosphere that took place on Eta Vulpeculae II (Androsynth homeworld) and Arcturus I (Burvixese homeworld), all I can say is *go for it!*

I realise this issue was probably resolved months ago but about the lander and mineral collection.

In the games manual it states that "
Mineral Scan
This function paints low-power, deep-radar waves across the planet, and
interprets the resulting echoes into dots on the mineral display, showing
the location, size, and type of each significant mineral deposit on the surface.
The diameter of the dot indicates the size of the deposit, and the
color informs you what type of minerals are in the deposit.
Of course, each planet has many more resources well beneath the surface.
However, your lander is not equipped to access these minerals, and must
limit itself to what resources are readily available."

So i don't think they will be drilling for the resources so much as collecting the surface samples. I know it sounds stupid driving around and picking up 10 tons of iron from the surface but hey thats what the manual says (oh and the resources what kind of measurement is the 10 iron you pick up? 10 tons, 10 cubic metres?)

Um apart from that i thought the first chapters was well written and just have to say  *Jumping Peppers!*

Hmmm i think its 10 kilo tonnes (pretty sure its metric tonnes) so I guess 10,000 tonnes of iron.

Despite it having been a few years, I think I may get back to this soon.

EDIT: Damn, looking over the posts at the beginning of this thread, I used way too many smilies.

Also, several people dislike the prologue (even though it's the prologue of the actual game). Any suggestions on how to fix this? I might expand on it by narrating a part of Zelnick's childhood or something. I'm leery about actually rewording what's there unless I scrap the whole thing and replace it with something else, though, since it is canonical Star Control material.

I'm thinking of going 'generic sci-fi' for the much-pondered over artificial gravity, if only because that's the way Star Control's setting seems to have been built. Any objections to this?

EDIT2: While writing, I suddenly had a thought: How do people get off the slave shielded planet when the Ur-Quan assign them to the space station? At first I thought that maybe they were spacefarers who were forced to run the station and reproduced on board, but Hayes's statement that it was "terrifying to look up and see the red slave shield" and the fact that Talana was a small child when her planet was slave shielded negates this.

Is it safe to assume that the Ur-Quan can bypass the slave shield somehow?

Chapter 2

“One planet left to mine, Captain,” Erika Graves said, locking the vectors into the control console. “Pluto. This shouldn’t take quite so long; it’s a much smaller planet. We should arrive by the seventeenth.”

“Thank you, Erika,” Captain Zelnick replied, placing his coffee mug on the table between himself and Sparks. “I can’t wait until we can turn this into a real warship.”
“We’ve already doubled the speed this tug moves at,” Sparks replied, stroking his bad leg with one hand. “As long as we can slip past Ur-Quan space, we should be able to find a decent ally or two.”

The newly fitted anti-matter thrusters pushed the ship away from the Station. The Vindicator had received extensive personnel rearrangements over the past couple weeks. Thankfully, nobody else had died while mining the solar system, due largely in part to several highly skilled operatives from the station joining Robinson’s mining team.
Lieutenant Kowalski was the foremost of this crew. The Russian had worked in a mine before the Ur-Quan slave-shielded Earth. This knowledge still stayed with him, even twenty years later. Along with him came Ensign Gregory O’Donnell, his right hand man. O’Donnell had a wry wit and a jovial nature about him. There were four others in Kowalski’s team, shady characters called ‘Luigi and the Liebermann Triplets’. They mainly stayed to themselves, but were immensely invaluable to the mining shuttle.
Alan Fritz, Sean Witherspoon, and Jordan Chin also came aboard. Lieutenant Robinson, Marshmallow, and Rigby remained. There had been a bit of debate over whether to include Jenkins, who Marshmallow claimed was a great co-pilot, or O’Donnell. Kowalski insisted on his friend being on the mining team, going so far as to say he’d refuse to join the mining expedition otherwise. Zelnick had finally relented, a choice that Sparks had berated him from that day forward.

Things would have been better for O’Donnell, by far, if he had stayed on the station.

***

“Come on, John, you’ve gotta let me go down there with them!” Traveller pleaded, following the old scientist down the residential corridor. “I’ve gotta see some action!”

“You will address me as either ‘Dr. Sparks’ or ‘sir’, Ensign Frakes,” Sparks replied, not turning around. “And no, you will not be going down. We’ve discussed this before: The mining shuttle is full. And the only action you’ll see will be if we have another Mercury incident. Now get out of my hair.”

“That shuttle is far from full,” Traveller said. “O’Donnell? Witherspoon? For God’s sake, Witherspoon was a security officer on the starbase, and O’Donnell worked in waste management with me, and I can tell you now he wouldn’t know his head from a gallon of liquid radioactive.”

“I wonder how little Commander Hayes thinks of us here on the Vindicator,” mused the old man. “That he should send his waste management staff to crew our starship. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get some sleep.”

Sparks disappeared into his quarters, the door sliding shut behind him before Traveller could get another word in.

***
 “What’s this for?” Marshmallow asked, looking over the rifle that Robinson had just handed him.

“They spotted an energy signature down on the planet’s surface,” the lieutenant replied. Behind him, seated across from Rigby at the back of the shuttle, Kowalski made a sound in his throat. He hadn’t been getting along with Robinson at all lately. The question of which of the two lieutenants was in charge was prevalent. “It’s probably nothing, but the Captain wants us to stow this with us just in case. Just put it in your compartment for now, we’ll pull it out on the off-chance we need it.”

The shuttle flew down to the largest source of minerals on the surface: a vein of Tzo Crystals. Kowalski and Rigby worked fast, using the drill to extract the valuable resource. O’Donnell impatiently sat on the edge of the shuttle, tapping the glass of his helmet and wishing he had a cigarette. Cigarettes were rare on the starbase, of course, partly because there was no way to manufacture them, and partly because Hayes had outlawed them when it became clear the Ur-Quan wouldn’t offer any medical support to the starbase residents; but O’Donnell was well-known for having a large supply of them that he had brought up from Earth. The legendary tale of O’Donnell bringing a crate filled with smokes instead of actual personnel luggage was well-known, especially by Hayes who had immediately assigned him to waste management. When Kowalski brought him onto the Vindicator, the smokers of the starbase were dismayed that their weekly cigarette would no longer be available. In truth, the supply was almost gone anyways.

“Any word on what the energy signature is, O’Donnell?” Robinson asked. Now he remembered, he was supposed to have been scanning the source to determine the nature of this anomaly. Whatever that meant. How could he do that from the other side of this rock anyways? He decided to just make a guess at it.

“Yeah, it looks like it’s a number of these Cho Crystals, but they’re reacting with each other in a way that gives off an energy signature,” he replied. “My guess, anyways.”
“Odd, I didn’t think that was how the scanners worked.”

“Yeah, well, these things are very iffy sometimes.”

When the Tzo Crystals were mined, Robinson took the crew into the shuttle, and they made their way to the next set. Cresting over a crater, they spotted the energy source up ahead. A large red dome, covered in space rocks and sand.

“There’s another one on our two o’clock, sir,” Marshmallow said. “An energy signature, I mean. This one is much fainter.”

“Alright, Luigi and the Liebermann triplets will the land rover and go check that out. The rest of us will have to run some more scans on that dome. I don’t know why you think that thing is a pile of Tzo Crystals, O’Donnell.”

“If O’Donnell says they’re Tzo Crystals, they’re Tzo Crystals,” Kowalski said. “O’Donnell knows what he’s doing, he’s my best man.”

“Look, Kowalski,” Robinson said. “That isn’t a Tzo Crystal. Nor is it a group of them. That thing looks man-made.”

“I’m sick and tired of wasting my time on this goddamned shuttle, Louie,” Kowalski retorted, rising to his feet. “No more scans, no more screwing around. We know they’re Tzo Crystals, so we mine the Tzo Crystals.”

Luigi and the Liebermann triplets got into the land rover – an open concept wheeled vehicle – and looked between Robinson and Kowalski. Robinson nodded to them, and they dropped from the shuttle onto the surface and moved towards the second energy source.

“Kowalski, we need to be careful, our lives are on the line here,” Robinson said. “We need to be absolutely sure.”

“And I’m saying that we are absolutely sure, because O’Donnell is absolutely sure, isn’t that right, Greg?”

All eyes turned to O’Donnell, who until this point had been playing with a console on the wall. There was a moment of silence. The seven miners waited for his response. Finally, after careful consideration, he slowly nodded his head.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Fine then,” Robinson sighed. “Let’s go.”

***

“What is it?” Robinson’s voice crackled over the comm. system. The shuttle was almost to the dome, and the Liebermann triplets had just finished digging up a metallic square object from Pluto’s surface.

“I’m not sure,” Luigi replied. “It looks like... Definitely a machine. Lots of flickering lights, there’s a button here. Joseph, don’t touch it, you idiot! Ah, Joseph just pushed the button. Nothing’s happening, though.”

***

 An alarm siren woke him from his slumber. Something had triggered the sensor trap! With lightning speed he moved across the room, pulling knobs and levers as he went. There was a large warship up above. He would not be struck down.

***

The dome began to move before their eyes. Specks of space dust were thrown up into the sky. They floated perpetually as the dome lifted itself up out of the ground, revealing itself to be a sphere. Smaller spheres were attached to it by long, grey tubes. Robinson recognized it immediately.

“Tzo Crystals my ass,” he yelled, reaching for the co-pilot’s chair. “That’s a Spathi Eluder! If we don’t get out of here now, we’re all dead. Luigi! Get out of there, Luigi! Run!”
A missile shot out from the dome, zipped across the landscape, and smashed into the block that Luigi and the Liebermann triplets were gathered around. The four of them disappeared in the resulting cloud of space dust. Marshmallow attempted to pull up the shuttle up. Nothing happened. A quick glance at the console quickly explained the source of this problem: the shuttle had just locked into stand-by mode.

“You didn’t set this, did you, sir?” Marshmallow asked. Robinson shook his head and turned around. O’Donnell was still playing with the console next to his seat.

“You bastard!” Robinson roared, leaping from his chair and grabbing the front of O’Donnell’s suit. “You locked up our shuttle!”

“I didn’t mean to!”

“You didn’t mean to? You didn’t mean to? What the hell were you thinking? Is this what your best man does, Kowalski? Get us all killed?”

“Let’s all just calm down,” Alan Fritz said, standing up and outstretching his arms. Behind him, Rigby was trembling with his eyes closed, and Kowalski was trying to make himself look busy by checking the mining gear. Witherspoon and Chin simply looked on. “I’m sure nobody else is going to be kill-“

Alan’s sentence was cut short by several steel balls tearing through the shuttle’s hull, one of which zipped into his chest and out his back. Another embedded itself into the mining gear, forcibly tearing it off the shuttle. Kowalski, Rigby, Witherspoon, and Chin all fell out the back as the shuttle was rocked to the side.

Marshmallow’s fingers zipped across the console and the shuttle came out of standby. Another burst of projectiles flew at them. He twisted the control stick. Two of the projectiles smashed into the shuttle, tearing off one of the thrusters. A piece of shrapnel sliced open the front of O’Donnell’s suit, and he quickly died a gasping death.

“We can’t take much more of this!” Marshmallow yelled. “Even one more of those things will blow this ship to a million pieces.”

“Get us behind something. Anything,” Robinson yelled back, pulling the rifle from Marshmallow’s cockpit compartment. “Just so long as it will protect us from the Eluder.”
Marshmallow took the shuttle behind a rock, cringing as it was struck by a third burst of projectiles. The Eluder spun around in the air and released another burst, this time towards the four miners on the surface. Chin was struck on the top of the head by one, almost completely atomizing him. Clouds of space debris pushed Kowalski far above Witherspoon and Rigby. A missile zipped past  him, snagging his sleeve and carrying him into the rock Marshmallow and Robinson were hiding behind.  The shuttle soared out of its cover and raced towards Witherspoon and Rigby. Robinson stood on top, firing his rifle at the Spathi ship. The vessel began to erratically zoom around, disappearing over the horizon and appearing on the opposite side within a few short seconds. It repeated this several times, and then fired another missile.
Witherspoon grabbed Rigby and jumped, the two of them being steadily consumed by the clouds of Plutonian dust, as the shuttle flew overhead. The Ensign reached out a hand and grabbed the broken starboard of the shuttle, pulling them both inside.

“We have come under fire from an alien vessel we found hiding on the surface of Pluto!” Marshmallow yelled into his comm. system. Captain! They killed Kowalski, Fritz, Chin, O’Donnell, Luigi, and all three of the Liebermann Triplets! We have returned fire, but our stunner can’t penetrate the ship’s hull armor. We are initiating emergency launch procedures!”

The battered shuttle streaked back towards the ship in a flash.

***

“Attention big, mean, hostile alien vessel hovering overhead in an obvious attack posture,” the Spathi said, displaying himself on the Vindicator’s viewscreen. The creature resembled a green slug, except it had a large, bulbous eye and two claw-like, spindly arms. “This is Spathi Captain Fwiffo. I know you are going to torture me, so let’s just get this over with right now.”

“What’s going on? What the hell is that?” Zelnick asked, completely befuddled.

“The coordinate s of my homeworld, Spathiwa, are 241.6, 368.7,” the Spathi continued. “And the ultra-secret Spathi Cypher, which is known only by me and several billion other Spathi is Huffi-Muffi-Guffi.”

The creature, somehow communicating although it lacked a mouth, had a high, disconcerting voice. Erika covered her ears with both hands. Zelnick grimaced and took a sip of coffee. Sparks just rolled his eyes.

“Sorry about that little mistake with your landing vehicle!” Fwiffo said. “I was so startled when it approached my vessel in a threatening manner that... er... my automated defense systems fired on it when it got too close. I hope nobody got hurt!”

“Attention, alien vessel,” Sparks said, his voice filled with command. “Identify yourself or be destroyed!”

“John, that is hardly the most diplomatic way of doing things,” Zelnick whispered. “Can’t you let me do the talking? I’m the Captain and all.”

“Yes, and eight more men just died under your watch. Now stand aside.”

“Of course, of course,” Fwiffo replied. “As I said, I am Captain Fwiffo of the Spathi voidship StarRunner. Our sensors have tracked your entry into this sytem, which you are no doubt here to conquer, and while you are certainly welcome to do so, we would be greatly appreciative if you would please just go away and forget this solar system ever existed. If you don’t go, it will greatly complicate our master-slave relationship with the Ur-Quan, who stationed us here to watch over the Earthlings.”

“He certainly likes to ramble on,” Sparks said. “I’ve had enough of this, spaceslug. I suggest you immediately perform whatever cultural practices are customary to your species preceding death.”

“What he meant to say, of course,” Zelnick cut in, standing up and blocking the viewscreen’s view of Sparks. “Is that we understand that sometimes these tragic misunderstandings happen. We grieve, but are not bitter.”

“Not bitter? Not bitter?” Sparks cried, shocked. “What do you mean, not-“

“Sparks, if you can’t compose yourself, I will have to ask you to leave the bridge.”

Sparks fell silent, his face flush with anger. He leaned back into his seat, one hand gripped tightly to the arm of his chair.

“Whew, thanks!” the Spathi said. “For a minute there, I thought you were going to kill me!”

“What are you doing here on Pluto?” Erika said. Sparks threw his hands up in the air when Zelnick failed to reprimand her for directly speaking to the Spathi.

“About 20 years ago, this region of space was dominated by a loose confederation known as the Alliance of Free Stars,” Fwiffo said. “Which was composed of aliens native to these parts who didn’t want to be enslaved. They made a valiant effort against the superior Ur-Quan force, and it even looked like they might miraculously defeat the combined Ur-Quan armada, right up to the point at which the Ur-quan totally defeated – indeed, annihilated – them.

“So what are you doing on Pluto?” Zelnick said, returning to his seat.

“When the Ur-Quan armada entered this system to subjugate formally the Earthlings, the Ur-Quan presented the humans with the standard slave options: join the Hierarchy as combat thralls, and retain some autonomy, including the right to travel through space, or become a ‘fallow’ species and return to pre-atomic savagery on the surface of their homeworld, encased for all time beneath an impenetrable force shield. The Humans chose the latter option, and so were swiftly imprisoned on the surface of Earth, but the Ur-Quan didn’t trust them to obey the restrictions, so they chose a small group of Hierarchy combat starships from the Ilwrath and Spathi fleets to create the so-called Earthgguard, and stationed them at a base on Earth’s moon.”

“My God, spaceslug,” Sparks cried. “I am sick of your rambling. Tell me what you are doing on Pluto, now.”

“Originally, we were stationed on Earth’s moon, which made Spathi a bit uneasy, because with each passing day we grew more and more worried about the sneaky Earthlings making a surprise attack, though the Ilwrath kept telling us that was impossible since the Earthlings had no ships or weapons whatsoever. That made us feel a bit better, but when the Ilwrath left, again we grew fearful and decided to make a strategic redeployment to Mars. Later on, we decided it would be prudent to relocate to Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, then later Saturn’s moon Titan, and finally her to Pluto.”

“The whole lot of these spaceslugs are cowards, Zelnick,” Sparks said. “It turned out alright for us, I suppose, since we weren’t annihilated by B.U.T.Ts on our way into the system. But what happened to the Ilwrath stationed in this system? Care to explain, spaceslug?”

“The Ilwrath contingent were supposed to be the toughest ridge-crest, er... the most rigid flipper, no...” Fwiffo stumbled over his words, trying to find just the right one to explain what he wanted to say. “Ah, yes – the backbone of the Earthguard force; but they departed the system en masse not long after the last Ur-Quan Dreadnought vanished from this region of space. They claimed to have received a direct order their Gods of Evil and Darkness, who had grown dissatisfied with the Ilwrath’s passivity and wanted them to kill or at least torture someone soon. Personally, I believe they just got bored and went off to have some fun.”

“When do you expect the Ilwrath to return, Fwiffo?” Zelnick asked.

“Well, when they were pushing up into Hyperspace 18 years ago, we asked them that very question, and I think they said something to the effect of ‘Real Soon’.”
“I see,” Zelnick continued. “What is happening at the base on Luna, then?”

“We decided that if the Earthlings figured out we had abandoned the base on Luna, they would be more likely to try something sneaky. So we rigged up some old service androids and ordered them to drive around on the lunar surface in bulldozers, endlessly pushing around the same piles of dirt,” Fwiffo explained. “In addition, we connected the base’s local radio transmitter to an audio Melnorme FunRom called ‘Winky’s Happy Night’, hoping that they would think we were still there.”

“Remind me to speak to Ensign Rigby about what a mayday signal actually entails,” Sparks said to the Captain. “And also, try getting some useful specialists next time we’re at the starbase. As for you, spaceslug, what happened to the other Spathi ships? This all looks pretty empty to me.”

“Over the past years, it became necessary to redeploy strategically some of our Earth forces to our homeworld in case of a sudden surprise attack by a vicious, unrelenting alien race which we Spathi call ‘The Ultimate Evil’!” Fwiffo laid the most emphasis on these last three words. Zelnick could not help but feel a chill at the thought of what the Ultimate Evil might be.

“Who or what is this ‘Ultimate Evil’?” he asked, trying to keep his voice from trembling.

“As yet, the Ultimate Evil remains largely unmanifest, and its powers and exact intentions are still a bit obscure, since it lurks just outside the range of even the most sensitive, long-range detectors, which we feel gives conclusive evidence as to The Ultimate Evil’s nefarious intent.”

“What he means, Zelnick,” Sparks said. “Is that the spaceslugs are cowards. How anybody can think of an evil worse than the Ur-Quan is beyond me, but Spathi are very good at it. You could throw salt at them and they would flee in terror.”

“For good reason, from the looks of it,” Erika piped up.

“Spaceslug, how many crew do you have aboard?”

“Dozens – that is to say, scores and perhaps even hundreds of my brethren stride through the corridors of this specially modified, super-efficient, mass-destruction-oriented starship which could lay siege to an entire planetary system should we choose to do so, which, fortunately for you, we have decided not to do today.”
“Hundreds?” Zelnick said, slightly taken aback. “Come on.”

“I am undone!” Fwiffo cried. “You are far too clever for a poor Spathi like me, and now I must submit to your superior, alien intellect. I guess I am not revealing any truly important secrets if I tell you that each of my species’ Eluder-class Voidships typically holds 30 Spathi crewmen, though at present my vessel, the StarRunner, is not up to full complement, due to the needs of my homeworld in their resistance against the Ultimate Evil, and in fact my vessel is somewhat understaffed right now, seeing as how I am the only Spathi on board, which is a bit frightening as I am sure you can understand.”

There was a long moment of silence. Only one Spathi? All this time, Earth’s jailor had been a single Spathi? It almost seemed ridiculous that Humanity had taken this long to figure it out. Zelnick knew that this creature, this Fwiffo, had to be clever if it had managed to fool his entire race for the past twenty years. Finally, he spoke up.
“So why are you still here, Captain Fwiffo?”

“Since it was our most powerful and unforgiving masters, the Ur-Quan, who stationed us here, we knew it would be grossly stupid to disobey them completely, but we decided that it would be okay to send just one ship home. We used one of our most ancient and solemn rituals, Puun-Taffy, to pick the lucky ship. Then... some months later, we decided that it wouldn’t really hurt if we sent one more ship home, and then later we sent another, and then another... well, you get the idea. Alas, as fate would have it, when the final ritual was performed, I, Fwiffo, was left here alone, for as even the most immature encrustling knows, there must always be one Spathi who picks the short Ta Puun stick.

“The Galaxy teems with threatening monsters,” Zelnick said, speaking each word slowly and carefully. “Are you happy here – alone and vulnerable?”

“How true, Captain, how true!” Fwiffo replied. “In truth, just between us, during the past seven years, I have been quite ill at ease, and yet now I find myself enjoying your company, this witty dialogue, and the presence of your huge, powerful, death-dealing starship, which being my friend, you would certainly feel compelled to use in order to save me from any hostile lifeforms who threatened me with death.”

“I’m sure you’d feel a lot safer if you were with us,” Zelnick continued. “Come on, Fwiffo, join our fleet!”

“What?” Sparks roared, shambling to his feet and leaning on his cane. “What the hell are you talking about? He kills our men and you let him follow us around in his Eluder? No, that is insane. We can’t do that!”

“Can I just cut in to say that I completely agree with Doctor Sparks on this one, Captain?” Erika said, turning to look at him.

“No you may not,” Zelnick said. “How about it, Fwiffo?”

“Happy days and jubilation!” the Spathi cried. “I discard all prejudice and hesitations and accept and celebrate your offer of protection and your undying commitment to my well-being! I must wax melancholy for just a moment though, and make sure you understand that any other Spathi ships we meet at large in the galaxy are not going to be quite so responsive to your friendly gestures as myself, since they bear more heavily the yoke of Ur-Quan enslavement, and are also apt to talk themselves out of allying with a totally unknown alien, which I, having been left here alone, cannot do. Welcome me aboard, Captain!”

***

“NO!”

Witherspoon marched down the corridor towards the airlock, rifle in hand. He had barely taken his suit off when he found out that the Captain was letting the Spathi on board. He, along with Timothy Wren, a back-up miner whose parents had been killed by a Spathi Eluder during the Great War, along with several other crewmen, were already on their way to ambush the Spathi as it came off the airlock.

“Captain wants a Spathi on board a ship? A Spathi who just killed eight of our boys? Not bloody likely,” Witherspoon said, his shoulder-length blond hair still matted with perspiration. “We’re gonna kill that thing, and if the Captain tries to stop us, he can eat lead, too!”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Traveller said, stepping out in front of the airlock. He was unarmed, but had a look of conviction on his face. His face was streaked with dirt from working in the fuel chambers, and his sandy brown hair was blown back from the cooling fans down there.

“Out of my way, Traveller,” Witherspoon grunted. “I got enough of your crap on the starbase.”

“Captain says that the Spathi gets to live, the Spathi gets to live,” Traveller replied. “That’s the gist of it. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”

“I’m not quite sure you know what you’re doing, jackass,” Witherspoon said, stepping forward so he and Traveller were toe-to-toe. “I’m going to kill the Spathi. It’s what he deserves.”

“No,” Traveller said back. “You aren’t.”

The airlock hatched opened, and the small, slug-like creature slithered through the opening. Witherspoon moved forward past Traveller, levelling his rifle. In a flash, Traveller pushed the rifle aside and threw Witherspoon to the floor. The miner fell onto his stomach. Wren leaped towards Traveller, who had turned his body when he threw Witherspoon, wrench in hand. Traveller grabbed him by the wrist and punched him hard in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. The other crewmembers in the corridor, mostly unarmed, backed off.

“I’ve always wanted to do that, Witherspoon,” Traveller said. “But you know what Hayes would have done to me. Being on this ship certainly has its perks.”
The Spathi, momentarily frozen in fear, regained its composure and emitted a high pitched wail.

“Please, please, I surrender to your pugilistic prowess, good Human,” Captain Fwiffo screamed. “Please do not torture me to death, for I am at your service and am no match for a skilled warrior such as you.”

“Relax, Spathi, I’m not going to hurt you,” Traveller replied. “What’s your name? I’m called Traveller.”

“My name, oh powerful one, is Captain Fwiffo,” Captain Fwiffo said. “And I must warn you that I may have actually been lying when I said that I am no match, for indeed I am a great hand-to-hand combatant, and could probably incapacitate you before you could finish blinking, meaning in due course that you would never see my lightning limbs fly toward you!”

“Right, sure,” Traveller said. “Come on, I’ll escort you to the Captain.”

The Ur-Quan can do that indeed. Every five years, they replace the crew from the starbase with a fresh one from Earth, as well as refill the starbase's power core. Also, when the Kohr-Ah start their Death March, they penetrate slave shields in order to destroy life on the planets under them.

So, races which we know can manipulate the slave shield are:
- Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, who can install a slave shield and bypass it
- Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah and Chmmr, who can bypass and crack it (whether they know how to install one is unknown)
- Spathi, who can install it (but maybe don't know how to bypass it... though they could probably learn to do so real quick if needed :P)

Feedback, suggestions, comments, anyone? This thread has over 16,000 views, so clearly somebody must want to say something.

High view count doesn't work that way. At least not on this forum. Protip: If you're dying to hear some responses, start a new thread and pretend whatever you're rehashing is brand new or different somehow. Threads with less than one page of content attract all sorts of people popping in and out. This thread (http://forum.uqm.stack.nl/index.php?topic=4629.0) I started could easily fit into the larger Balance Mod thread, but I wouldn't get half as many responses if I put it inside there.

I haven't invested the time to go through your writing. This response was the result of random chance.

Regarding my previous post: it seems there is no way in-game to find out whether the Kohr-Ah can crack or penetrate a slave shield. They never visited the Chmmr or Syreen during their Death March. They do come to the Spathi, but apparently the slave shield over Spathiwa stays up, and as we can't scan the surface we can't be sure whether or not the Spathi were harmed.

The Death March does end with Earth - a slave-shielded planet - and the Kohr-Ah broadcast a victory message which ends the game. It goes as follows:


They destroy the starbase. However, there's no mention of passing the shield or cleansing Earth. They do say that they ''have destroyed all the sentient species in this region of space", but the Chmmr and Syreen are still alive, right?
So, what I'm saying is that there seems to be no canonical proof whatsoever that the Kohr-Ah can penetrate slave shields.

This was probably just an overlook by Fred & Paul though, and Tiberian and I both think that they probably intended that all the races are destroyed. But even if it's not canon in the strictest of senses, I think it's safe to assume that the Kohr-Ah can indeed penetrate slave shields (personally, I assume this ;)). So Grakelin, if you're reading this, I suggest you work with this assumption :)

EDIT: Ok, I found something more. In their dialogue after they lose the doctrinal war, the Kzer-Za are clearly convinced that the Kohr-Ah can indeed penetrate slave shields. Well, that's canonical confirmation, so I guess my argument is void after all :P

Edit2: Thanks Meep!

Forget I said anything ;D

This is the whole quote:
(Excellent writing, btw)

Shiver: Keeping what you say in mind (though 16,000 views! More than the rules!), I'll reboot into a new thread upon writing chapter 3. This will not be until December, as my schedule is very hectic for the month of November (Expect something in mid-late December, writing is always easier around Christmas time when things slow down). I am still somewhat confused about the radical shift in interest garnering this thread has received since several years ago, however. Has the forum died that much? When I posted this, just the conception stage drew a crowd.

If it interests you in any way, I will say (possibly again) that I am still using your gameplay guide as a general timeline for events, though I may alter one or two directions depending on how much information is available for the Vindicator crew at certain points (for instance, since only the Melnorme know about the Taalo, the Vindicator must buy information from them to get the Talking Pet). So I'd say this project and any future success it may have owes you somewhat of a debt!

SuddenDeath and Meep-eep: Thanks for the input, guys! I'll work with the assumption that the Kzer-Za are able to bypass their own shields (the Kohr-Ah aren't particularly important in this aspect, as I'm not planning the Doctrinal Conflict to end in this rendition, as I think that's the canonical view. Am I incorrect?). Another question, though, is: Do the Kzer-Za still supply the Syreen base with crewmembers from time to time? I would imagine not, but they are awfully close to the Ur-Quan battle zone, so maybe the Ur-Quan do occassionaly resupply? From what I can tell from implications in dialogue, the Organon ambush happens pretty late in the game canonically (It's Talana who gives the player the hint to go find the Chmmr), so that might explain (story-wise) why the Ur-Quan don't show up and find out the Syreen are rebelling, thus glassing their planet.